


Succubus Half

by Yinepuhotep



Category: City of Heroes
Genre: F/F, F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:27:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24682318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yinepuhotep/pseuds/Yinepuhotep
Summary: When a hero group behaves worse than the villains they claim to be hunting, it's left to a mad scientist to pick up the pieces and teach their only surviving victim what it means to love.
Relationships: Jules/Tabby/Evette





	Succubus Half

June 21, 2010

06:00

Some days, I wonder what an anthropologist who wasn’t afraid of supers would say in a paper describing them. From what I’ve seen, they can generally be narrowed down to three categories:

  1. Boy Scouts – You know, those people who think that what they’re doing is making the world a better place.
  2. Psychotics—People who are in it to beat people up, for whatever reason. Whether it’s because their parents were murdered in front of them when they were nine years old, or because they came back from Iraq with a nifty power and a head full of voices, they’re all psychotics.
  3. Adolescents—They don’t care if they’re making the world a better place, and they don’t particularly want to beat people up (or get beat up themselves). They just know that wearing the tights improves their chances to get laid, get free beers at the corner bar, or get invited to throw out the opening pitch for their favorite team.



I was thinking about that last night, when I heard the sounds of combat coming from the general direction of the local Circle of Thorns coven. I don’t know why the police hadn’t rooted them out already, but I knew about them from the day they moved into the old warehouse and started converting it for their use. My spy probes had enough in their files that I knew enough to lock down my lab and run all the security up to “Paranoid."

What I didn’t expect was the local super hero group – I think they called themselves the Justifiers – arriving a little before midnight and announcing their arrival by dropping a yacht through the roof of the warehouse.

I cranked my force field up to “Asteroid Strike” and retreated to the lowest level of my lab until the sounds of destruction were long gone. Sleep was pretty much out of the question, given that it was nearly 4am by the time they were done blowing things up. I spent most of the last two hours doing the final tuning on my all-terrain chair prototype so I can go out and inspect the wreckage for potential salvage. Now the prototype is ready, I just need to transfer from my standard chair to the all-terrain chair, so I can get out there.

12:00

She’s stabilized. Now what do I do with her? Sorry. I found a lot of good salvage in the wreckage of the battle, sent my worker bots scurrying between the lab and the warehouse with the parts that were worth bringing back. Then I saw her. Under a section of sheet metal wall, her wings spread in ways that no living thing’s wings should spread.

Every single bone in her wings had been broken, and then for good measure, the membranes had been shredded and the wings had been twisted and pulled all out of position. Slivers of silver had been shoved into the broken bones, and the bones were dead around the silver. I knew, if she were alive, her wings would have to be amputated to save her from gangrene.

I had two of my worker bots clear the rubble from around her, then lift her from the wreckage. She hung between them, a spear shoved through her right eye and out the back of her head. Silver, of course. She wasn’t merely unconscious, she was in a coma. Lucky for her. Whoever had done this to her was obviously one of the psychotics, and he – or she – just as obviously hated demons.

Both her arms and her legs had been broken in several places. Luckily, those bones weren’t as easy to get to as the wing bones, so they hadn’t had silver rammed into them. Still, given the damage the spear was doing to her brain, and the number of bullet holes in her body, she’d be lucky if she could use them when she woke up. And I was going to make sure she woke up. Demon or not, no one deserved to be brutalized like that. Once I had a chance to review my surveillance files, I’d know who had done this to her.

My first priority, though, was to get her safely back to the lab where I could treat her. I called a gurney and had the worker bots lay her on it, after cutting the spear off short enough that it wouldn’t catch on things on the way back to the lab.

Once I got her back, I started working on her. First step was removing her wings. I didn’t know if they’d grow back, but if I didn’t cut them off, she was going to die of silver poisoning and gangrene. Unfortunately, while I was working, the monitors showed me pockets of gangrene in both legs and her right arm, so they had to go, too. I hope they’ll regenerate once the silver’s out of her.

The next step was removing the spear. That was trickier, because it was one of those nasty barbed spears, so I couldn’t just pull it back out the way it had gone in. Luckily, whoever had impaled her with it had pushed it through the back of her skull, so I ended up using a two-pronged approach to getting it out.

First, I went in with a laser cutter from the front. I destroyed what was left of her eye in the process, but it was the only way to get to that spot where the point and the shaft met, so I could cut the point free of the shaft. Whoever had designed the spear had made it like a pilum, where the point was about a third of the total length, and was much thinner than the shaft, so it would bend easily. It also meant that when I cut the shaft free, I could pull it back out from where it went in, then I could proceed with step two of the extraction.

The second part of the extraction involved pulling the point out the back of her head, through the hole it had already made in her skull, so that the barbs didn’t catch on her brain and rip it to shreds, the way they would have if I had tried to pull it back out her eye. It was when I was removing the spear that I discovered it had destroyed her right ear, too.

I had to restart her heart twice during the work: once while amputating her legs – and thank goodness it wasn't while I was cutting out all the dead muscle in her back – and once while removing the spear from her head.

Once I had the spear out, and her head closed up, all I could do was run an IV, put her on oxygen, and hope that she would wake up.

Right now, she looks nothing like a succubus. She looks like the innocent victim of an attempted murder, holding on to life by the barest thread.

# # #

June 22, 2010

21:00

I spent most of today going over the footage of the attack. The assholes in the warehouse were bad enough – they had human sacrifices and demon summonings going, and were blathering the usual tripe about world conquest, yadda fucking yadda.

The so-called heroes, the Justifiers, didn’t make a distinction between the warehouse goons and the victims. If it moved, they killed it. If it didn’t move, they killed it anyway, just to be sure. They joked about how many victims the warehouse goons had, when nearly half of them were their own doing. So much for their claims to be doing the work of Jesus.

Evette – I’ve decided to call her that, since Eve seems too pretentious – had been hiding behind some debris when the “heroes” found her. Apparently, she had been the last of the demons, and the “heroes” were disappointed at how quickly the others had died. One of the Justifiers had ginned up a device that prevented the demons from escaping to their home dimension – note to self: work out how it works and whether there’s a possible counter to it – and they were taunting her with her inability to escape.

When she tried to escape by taking to the air, one of the Justifiers cut her down with a minigun. She was still conscious when they started on her. The spear to the head didn’t happen until they were done raping and torturing her. They just stabbed her with it, nailing her to the floor, and walked out.

#

I made sure the door to Evette’s room was closed, then I plugged myself into one of my remotes and began the most extreme combat workout I had in my files. Since I can’t do anything like that with my own body, doing it through a remote was as close as I could get to burning out the rage running through me at what the Justifiers had done.

Once I was able to handle my tools without shaking from rage, I began working on Evette. She was in no shape for any kind of surgery, but I could measure her, get detailed scans of the damage, and start planning the work I would do when she was ready.

# # #

June 23, 2010

19:30

That’s rich. That’s so incredibly rich, I can’t believe it. The supernatural fucks had their own surveillance cameras, and they caught every detail of the attack. The police managed to find the tapes. I got advance warning of what the police were going to do, when a detective named Vincent came around this morning to discuss Evette.

#

“Coming! Coming!” Jules Lawson called toward the incessantly ringing doorbell. “Twenty-one! Answer the door!” “Yes, sir,” a humanoid robot, with shining brass-plated skin and a large “21” in black on its chest and back, answered.

It took three steps toward a small garage-style door, then pressed a green button on the door’s control box. The door rolled up, revealing a woman in a navy blue suit, carrying what could have been an aluminum camera case. Twenty-one looked down at her for a moment.

“You rang?” Twenty-one asked, after a moment’s examination.

“Are you Jules Lawson?” the woman asked.

“No,” Twenty-one said.

“That would be me,” Jules said, gliding across the room in his power chair. The chair was obviously not stock from some wheelchair catalog. For starters, instead of a joystick control, it plugged directly into Jules, using ports just behind his ears. In addition, it was made of the same shiny brass that Twenty-one – and, for that matter, all the other bots in the place – was made of. In addition, it didn’t have wheels. Instead, it floated about an inch above the floor, apparently on a cushion of air, although it was far quieter than the average hovering device. “What can I do for you?”

“I am detective Sonja Vincent,” the woman said, extending a hand without any obvious hesitation. “I’m here to discuss the attack on your neighbors on the night of the twentieth.”

“I’d prefer to forget they were my neighbors,” Jules said, as he took her hand and raised it as if to kiss it, only to kiss the air just an inch above it instead.

Det. Vincent smiled and took her hand back, obviously appreciating his mode of greeting.

“I take it you have information I should know about, for some reason?”

“Yes, we do,” Det. Vincent said. “You see, we know you were there, a few hours after the Justifiers left. Why didn’t you call an ambulance, Mr. Lawson?”

“How many hospitals know how to treat a succubus?” Jules asked, not bothering to try denying his involvement. “And how many hospitals know how to treat a torture victim?”

“That’s part of our interest,” Det. Vincent said. “Do you think she’d be willing to testify about what happened to her?”

“Assuming she lives, and assuming she remembers?” Jules asked. He rubbed his temples, then said, “Come with me, Detective.” Jules spun his chair and led the way through his lab, into an elevator. Once Det. Vincent had joined him, he sent the elevator down. When it reached its destination, and the doors opened, he led the way down a short hallway, into a room with large monitors hanging from the ceiling on what were obviously improvised mounts, all of them aimed so that a person could see everything from the doorway.

“Here she is, Detective,” Jules said as he glided into Evette’s room. “I had to amputate her wings, and remove a silver spear from her head. Now that I’m certain she’ll survive, I’m going to scan her for silver in other places, such as from bullets. She isn’t healing the way she should. Then again, the minigun was loaded with silver bullets.”

Det. Vincent approached the bed and looked down at Evette. After a moment, she opened her case and took out a camera, then proceeded to take numerous photos of Evette, the bed, and the equipment around the bed, as well as the monitors hanging above it.

“If you want pictures, I can give you a couple day’s worth,” Jules said. “The memory on my surveillance cameras runs on a twenty-eight day cycle.”

“You have enough memory that you can afford to keep twenty-eight days of surveillance footage?” Det. Vincent asked, surprised. “Does that include your footage of the attack?”

“It does,” Jules hissed. Det. Vincent gave him a sharp look, then nodded slowly.

“So you know what they did, to her and to the innocent victims,” Det. Vincent said. “Don’t become one of them, Mr. Lawson. The world has far too many as it is.”

“Trust me,” Jules grated out between clenched teeth, “I have no intention of doing so. What she plans, if she plans anything, we’ll see when she wakes up. But honestly, I have no idea when, or if, she’ll wake up. I just ... damn it, no one deserves what they did to her! I don’t care if she is a demon, she didn’t deserve to be tortured like that!”

“We agree,” Det. Vincent said. “Thanks to the surveillance footage we got from the facility’s own video cameras, every one of the Justifiers is looking at multiple murder charges. If you could add testimony as to what you found when you were salvaging the ruins, it would help cinch the case.”

“Would it?” Jules asked. “Or would it discredit the case, when it came out that Evette is a succubus?”

“I leave questions like that for the lawyers to argue,” Det. Vincent said. “I just try to get all the evidence I can.”

“Tell you what,” Jules said, “if you have access to a doctor who can help me take care of her, I’ll be happy to testify. I want those bastards behind bars.”

Det. Vincent took a phone out of her pocket, tapped it, and frowned when she couldn’t get a signal.

“Just a second,” Jules said, then called, “Five! Patch this level into the cell phone signal booster!”

A voice came from an overhead speaker grill, saying, “Patching ... you should have signal now.”

Det. Vincent looked at her phone, and nodded. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” came from the grill. “Happy to help.”

“Captain?” Det. Vincent said into her phone. “That’s right. He’s willing to help, if we can get a doctor to him. No, he doesn’t mean going to a doctor, he means the doctor coming out here to his location. Yes, sir, he managed to save her life, but she’s in no condition to be moved. Besides, how many hospitals do you know with facilities for treating a succubus?”

Jules snorted, amused that she had taken up his objection. He glided to the side of the bed and took Evette’s good hand in his, then watched her and did his best to tune out the police conversation. The first day, he had nearly panicked when she wasn’t breathing, until he realized that not breathing was natural to her. Once he’d hooked up some sensors to scan her brain, he’d been much less worried. Brain activity was something he could track, even if she wasn’t breathing.

He had to admit, if she were conscious and aware, she could easily draw him in. As it was, she had drawn him in while in a coma, but with an entirely different attraction. Without any conscious thought to shape her expression, he could see the pure beauty of her face, and appreciate her for what she was. True, she was a demon, but she was a demon that was designed to match the human idea of perfection and beauty. Unconscious, without any magical or telepathic enhancements, she was exactly what she had been designed to be. As much as he would have enjoyed studying her all day, though, there was work to be done, and he was the only one around to do it. He glanced at Det. Vincent, who was still involved in her phone conversation, and began silently ordering his bots to bring the materials he needed to Evette’s room.

“Mr. Lawson,” Det. Vincent said, pocketing her phone. “I have managed to convince my captain that sending you a doctor is a good idea. Now, what can you tell me about the attack?”

“You know what was on the surveillance tapes,” Jules said. “When I got there with my bots, I found her under the ruins of a sheet metal wall. Her wings looked as if someone had gone after the membranes with silver claws, then had deliberately broken each bone and inserted silver slivers into the broken pieces. By the time I found her, the smaller bones were already dead, and the larger ones had pockets of gangrene in them, around the silver slivers. The spear ... it had been shoved through her right eye, into the floor beneath her. Whoever did it had to have been either extremely strong or extremely fast, because silver is not normally strong enough to penetrate concrete, unless thrust with a lot of force or speed behind it. I still have the piece of spear I took out of her head. It was barbed, so I couldn’t just pull it out. I had to go in and surgically remove it. The spear had to have been designed specifically to cause the maximum possible amount of damage and pain to any demon or shapeshifter it might be used on. Not only was it barbed, the shaft was of the pilum style, which means that once it was thrust into something, it would lodge there and bend under its own weight.

“I knew I had to get the spear out of her, because it was poisoning her just by being in contact with her flesh like that. As it is, I’m afraid she might not remember anything when she wakes up, because of the extensive brain damage. I’m also concerned that she’ll never regain the use of her left side”

“How bad is it?” Det. Vincent asked, moving to stand on the other side of Evette’s bed and looking down at her. For the first time, she could see how extensive the bandages were on the right side of her head, and how her left arm appeared completely limp, all the way up to her neck.

“If she were a human,” Jules said, “They’d be talking Hospice. I’m not giving up on her that easily. Demons are supposed to regenerate naturally, right? The way I see it, the silver killed her wings – I have them in cryo storage in case your evidence people want to study them – and it ruined her ear and eye and the part of her brain the spear ran through, but the rest of her body should be healing. The fact that she isn’t healing tells me that the bullets she was shot with had to be silver, too. So my plan for today was to find the bullets and get them out, so she can heal. If I manage that, she should wake up within the next few days.”

“That bad,” Det. Vincent whispered, then shook her head. “All right. I’m not sure how soon the doctor will get here, but the captain did assure me he would have the doctor come out today. I’ll wait for my people to get here with a cryo truck. Would it be too much to ask you to show me around?”

#

I showed Det. Vincent around while we waited for her people and the doctor to arrive. The evidence crew arrived and departed, and then the doctor came, around 13:00. The doctor was a pleasant surprise: Dr. Tabitha Hodges, the very same doctor who had installed my ports, was my police-assigned doctor.

#

“Tabby!” Jules cried out happily.

“Julie!” Dr. Hodges replied, smiling. “What kind of trouble did you get into this time?”

“It’s not me, Tabby,” Jules said. “Det. Vincent, do you need anything more from me?”

“Nothing I can think of,” Det. Vincent said, smiling warmly. “If I do, I’ll be sure to call.”

“And don’t be afraid to drop by,” Jules said, smiling warmly back at Det. Vincent. “Just because I’m stuck in this chair doesn’t mean I’m anti-social.”

“Julie may not be able to get out much,” Dr. Hodges said, “but he does enjoy having company. And he plays a mean game of Monopoly.”

“You!” Jules laughed, blushing.

“All right,” Det. Vincent said, chuckling. “I’ll remember that.” She was out the door, when she suddenly stopped and came back in. “Mr. Lawson, how good is your security?”

“Good enough to stop a battleship barrage,” Jules said. “Why?”

“You might want to activate it,” Det. Vincent said, “as soon as I leave. We’re pretty sure the Justifiers have leaks in the police department, and once they get your name, you’ll be high on their list.”

“I understand,” Jules said. “Twenty-three! Set all security systems to maximum! Add Det. Vincent to the list of authorized personnel.”

“Understood,” a voice said from the nearest speaker grill. “Security set to ‘Asteroid Strike’. Det. Vincent added to authorized personnel list. Det. Vincent, would you be so kind as to look at the nearest security camera? I’ll blink its light so you know which one it is. I need an iris and retina scan for identification.”

“You don’t need me to look into a reader?” Det. Vincent asked, surprised, as she looked toward the camera with the flashing light.

“No, we’re not that primitive,” the voice said. “Got it. You can go any time you want now. Have a nice day.”

#

Once Det. Vincent was gone, I took Tabby down to see Evette. She was as appalled as I had been when I rescued her. We didn’t waste any time, but cleaned her up and began the work of removing silver bullets. It took most of the afternoon, but by the time we were done, we had removed one hundred fifty-two bullets and forty-seven bullet fragments. The difference was amazing: As soon as the bullets were gone, her body began to heal, the flesh knitting together as we watched. The only part of her that wasn’t healing was her head. Tabby suggested that, after we both had a good night’s sleep, we take a look and see if there were any bits of silver left in her from the spear.

I had to agree with her. If she was as exhausted as I was, neither of us was in any condition to be performing brain surgery. We ordered Chinese and settled in to watch the evening news. Most of it was the usual depressing stuff. Then came what Det. Vincent had hinted at.

The District Attorney’s official spokesman had held a press conference while Tabby and I had been working on Evette. In the press conference they had announced the arrest warrants for every member of the Justifiers, on charges of murder, conspiracy to commit murder, assault, violation of the civil rights of the victims they’d killed, and a few other charges that I didn’t pay attention to, because I was busily being stunned by the fact that they had actually filed charges against super heroes.

As of the evening news, not one of the Justifiers had gone to the police to surrender. I decided that not only was I happy I’d listened to Det. Vincent and cranked up the defenses, I was going to do my best to convince Tabby to stay the night, too. It didn’t take much convincing. As soon as Tabby saw that none of the Justifiers had surrendered, she asked if my spare room was still available.

This is one of those times I really wish all those myths about paraplegics were true. I can _feel_ things below my waist just fine. I just can’t _use_ anything below my waist, which makes a unique kind of torture out of knowing that the sexiest doctor in the state is preparing to go to bed just a few rooms away.

Apparently, Evette is affecting my thinking, even in a coma. I would not otherwise express anything like those feelings verbally. It would carry too high a risk of affecting my professional relationship with Tabby.

#

“What makes you think I don’t want our professional relationship affected?” Dr. Hodges asked from the doorway to Jules’ room. “Is that the only reason you’ve never said anything in the last five years?”

“I – yes,” Jules admitted, hanging his head.

“One thing you have to be proud of,” Dr. Hodges said, as she walked into the room. “You have never been one for making excuses or dodging the issue, no matter how much you might want to. Yes, I overheard you in the hallway. Yes, I probably listened longer than I should. But how else was I going to confirm that your feelings for me were more than merely professional?”

“You weren’t,” Jules said, after several moments in which his face played out the consideration and discarding of numerous alternative answers.

“That’s right,” Dr. Hodges said. “I wasn’t. Now, what is it going to take for you to invite me into your bed for the night?”

“A bed?” Jules suggested, gesturing around the room.

The room itself was sparse in its furnishings. One wall was covered with book shelves, another with glass-fronted cabinets that contained small, half-finished projects, and a third contained cabinets that were labeled with various medical supplies. In front of the glass-fronted cabinets was a U-shaped desk, far enough from the wall to easily allow Jules’ chair to enter the inner side of the U and take up the position it currently occupied. Between the desk and the medical cabinets, there was an area of floor with clamps built into it, which was large enough to allow free movement on all sides, even if his chair were held in place by the clamps. Nothing else took up space in his room.

“You don’t have a bed,” Dr. Hodges said, looking around the room. “How and where do you sleep?” Jules backed out of the center of his desk, glided across the floor, and stopped above the clamps. As the chair sank to the floor, the clamps rose up and gripped it on all four sides of the base. As soon as the clamps were in place, the back of the chair began to fold down and a headrest extended, while the footrests rose and the seat tilted, until it stopped with the chair reclined in the position of an F-16 pilot’s seat.

“Once I change my bags,” Jules said, “I’m ready to sleep.”

“You don’t have a bed,” Dr. Hodges said. “In that case, I would like to invite you to join me in the guest room.”

“You’re not worried about the mess?” Jules asked.

“No more than I am about Dr. Capacitor getting through your defenses,” Dr. Hodges said. “Jules, I’m a doctor. If I were worried about bodily messes, I would have been out of the business years ago.”

“Why bring up Capacitor now, after five years?” Jules asked, as he went through the routine of restoring his chair to upright and unclamping it from the floor. His attention focused on the medical cabinets, he completely missed the expression of surprise and worry on Dr. Hodges’ face.

“He’s calling himself Professor Photon now,” Dr. Hodges said. “He’s one of the Justifiers.”

“He’s ... one of ... the _Justifiers_?” Jules asked, dropping both his colostomy and catheter bags. He wrapped his arms around himself and quaked, like a dog caught in a hurricane. “How long have you known?”

“Since yesterday” Dr. Hodges said, “when I was examining the injuries on some of the victims. They’re not the kind of thing you forget easily.”

“Damn it, Tabby!” Jules swore. “They promised me he’d never put on a mask again!”

“And Dr. Capacitor didn’t,” Dr. Hodges said. “The problem with super heroes is that they can change IDs just by changing clothes. But now that he’s committed felonies in two different IDs, he’ll be considered enough of a risk that when they apprehend him, he won’t get bail.”

“Not as long as the judge is honest,” Jules said sourly. “And either fearless, or convinced of the effectiveness of his security.”

“The DA knows,” Dr. Hodges said. “That was what convinced him to pursue murder charges. That, and the bunch of them joking about how the dead wizards would get all the blame for the dead victims. The more that recording got played, the angrier both the police and the DA’s office got. It was like the masks were saying they considered us all a bunch of morons.”

“But what judge is going to sign off on it?” Jules asked.

“Ever hear of Battleship?” Dr. Hodges asked. “She was a hero from the Seventies. Indestructible, strong enough to pick up an armored car with one hand, disappeared without explanation?”

“No,” Jules said. “I can’t say the name rings a bell.”

“It will after this,” Dr. Hodges said. “She became a lawyer. Gave up her career as a hero in order to pursue a career as a prosecutor. She didn’t just prosecute the easy cases, the way most prosecutors pad their resumes. She went after crooked cops, corrupt politicians, even crooked lawyers. She even prosecuted another prosecutor who violated the laws about falsifying evidence. She’s a judge now. And she’s the one who has this stack of cases.”

“So when they try to intimidate her ...,” Jules mused, then smiled. “I think I’d pay good money to see a video of that encounter.”

“I’d be surprised if cameras weren’t already being set up in anticipation,” Dr. Hodges said, chuckling softly. “Seriously, Julie. I don’t want to be alone tonight. And I’ve been waiting five years for you to make a pass at me, only to find out that you haven’t done it because you don’t want to affect our professional relationship?”

“Tabby,” Jules said softly, blushing as he watched her pick up his bags, “You’ve seen me in ways that no lover ever would, and you continued to treat me with the utmost respect and consideration. How could I repay that by making crass attempts to treat you like a bar girl? It would be, at the very least, rude.”

“Treat me ... like ... a ... bar ... girl?” Dr. Hodges asked, outright disbelief filling her voice. “Julie, you sweet, lovable idiot! Didn’t you notice that the only reason I didn’t throw you down on a bed and screw your brains out was that you were too battered, bruised, and bleeding to survive the experience? That utmost respect and consideration you mentioned was, quite frankly, fear for your life. I volunteered for this assignment, in hopes that five years of healing would make it possible.”

Jules studied Dr. Hodges intently for a few moments, then extended a hand to her.

“Would you hand me my bags, Tabby?” Jules asked. “I need to get a replacement catheter and some spirit gum for later.”

“Why don’t you leave that to me, Julie,” Dr. Hodges suggested, “while you drive your chair, and get whatever bots you need to help with transferring from your chair to the bed? Unless you’ve changed the layout of the cabinets recently, I’ll be able to find what I need by the time you’re half-way there.”

“All right, all right,” Jules laughed. “You know I could never argue with you anyway.”

“I know,” Dr. Hodges said, smiling contentedly as she began opening cabinets and retrieving the items she needed.

Eleven and Twenty-two were waiting for Jules when he arrived in the guest room. They didn’t say anything as they got to work, removing his clothing and transferring him from his chair to the guest bed.

Once Jules was on the bed, Twenty-two opened a small locked refrigerator on the back wall and removed a black case, about the size of an insulin case.

“Twenty-two, what’s that?” Jules asked.

“This is the Alprostadil injection Dr. Hodges brought,” Twenty-two said. “Dr. Hodges instructed me in the proper method of administration, so you and she should be quite pleased by the results.”

“And maybe,” Eleven added acerbically, “you won’t grumble quite so much about that bastard Dr Capacitor leaving you with feeling, but no way to do anything about it.”

“I take it I’ve been somewhat wearing?” Jules asked, blushing.

“No more than forty-grit emery cloth,” Eleven said. “Hopefully, taking care of a basic biological need will resolve that problem.”

“I see they’re just as blunt as ever,” Dr. Hodges said from the doorway, where she stood, watching, a basket held in one hand. She smiled and slunk from the door to the bed, moving with the enthusiasm of a professional dancer, if not the skill.

While Dr. Hodges kept Jules’ attention on her, Twenty-two administered the injection. At the bed, Dr. Hodges put her basket on a bedside table and began moving to the beat of Hall & Oates’ “Man Eater”, while keeping her eyes on Jules and disrobing, artfully draping each article of clothing over a different piece of furniture as she did.

Between the injection, the performance, and Dr. Hodges’ clear and obvious interest in him, Jules’ lack of functional motor neurons below the waist ceased to be a problem within a little over ten minutes.

###

June 24, 2010

23:00

We did it! As far as we can tell, we managed to extract every bit of silver from Evette’s brain. It took me using my smallest remote, and Tabby guiding me with a continual live feed from my highest-magnification sensor, but after nineteen hours of surgery, we could finally find no more traces of silver! The best confirmation for us, though, was when Evette’s regeneration began to kick in, and she began healing, almost too fast for me to get out of her head.

Both of us were too exhausted to do more than poke at the food the bots brought us, but we were too exhilarated to fall asleep. We set up watch in Evette’s room, just drinking in the sight of the data flowing over the monitor screens as she healed. Note to self: Attach data dump of surgery when more awake.

###

June 25, 2010

04:30

She’s awake. She woke up around three, screaming in terror. Tabby got to her first, of course, damn this chair, but we were able to get her calmed, even if she couldn’t understand what we were saying. I’m guessing on that, based on the fact that even after we got her calmed down, all she was able to utter was noises, mostly like you’d hear from a baby that hasn’t learned to talk yet. Still, with Tabby on one side, and me on the other, and both of us talking as gently as we could, she finally relaxed and fell asleep, holding tightly on to us. I know she’s a succubus, but the smile on her face as she fell asleep, holding us the way she was, was the purest expression of innocence I have ever seen.

She woke up again a few minutes ago. It took a bit for us to get her to sit up, but now she’s sitting in her bed, watching me as I record this. Tabby’s off getting cleaned up and dressed for the day. I’ll go do the same, once she’s back. I doubt we’re going to get any more sleep, now that Evette is awake. Oh dear. She’s trying to get out of bed.

#

Evette fell to the floor, tangled in her blanket. She lay there for a moment, surprised, then let out a wail of unhappiness. Jules glided as close to her as he could get, and offered her his hand. She looked up at him, tilted her head curiously, and raised her own right hand to touch his. Their fingers touched, and she smiled, then let out a childish giggle as she felt his hand, petting it like it was a small animal, completely forgetting her position as she explored his hand.

“Can you come to me, Evette?” Jules asked, smiling encouragingly at her as he did.

She cringed for a moment, then frowned, before pushing at her blankets with her left hand, until she managed to get herself free. Once she was free, she began poking at her right arm, as if trying to understand were the rest of it had gone.

“Evette!” Jules called, worried, when he saw bruises beginning to form on Evette’s arm. She cringed away from him, then looked up, her eye gazing at him sadly, as he reached for her and crooned gently, “Come to me, sweetie. I’m not mad, sweetie. Can you take my hand, Evette?”

“How’s she doing?” Dr. Hodges asked as she looked in from the doorway, freshly showered and wrapped in a fluffy bathrobe.

“I scared her,” Jules said miserably. “When I saw her starting to get bruises from poking herself in the arm, I raised my voice, and it scared her.”

Evette reached out to Jules and touched his face, cooing questioningly, like an animal, as she moved closer, pushing herself with the stumps of her legs.. Jules bent down to meet her hand, took it in both of his hands, and gently kissed it before speaking softly and gently to her.

“I’m not mad at you, sweetie,” Jules crooned. “I just don’t want to see you get hurt. Are you OK, Evette?”

Evette looked up at Jules and tugged her hand out of his, then traced his face with her fingertips before doing the same to her own. When she got to the bandages over her right eye socket, she cooed questioningly, then reached out to touch Jules’ right eye, before touching her bandages again.

“I know, sweetie,” Jules said. “It’ll be all right, I promise. I’ll make you a new eye, that’ll work even better. Then the bandages will be gone.”

“I’m not sure she understands,” Dr. Hodges said, paused to kiss Jules, then sat on the floor beside Evette. “How’d you get down here, hon? Looks like an awful long way from here.”

“She tried to get to me while I was making a journal entry,” Jules said. “I didn’t get to her fast enough to keep her from falling out of bed.”

“Look at him,” Dr. Hodges said, giving Evette a gentle hug and a smile. “Always taking the blame on himself, even when he couldn’t do anything about it. I’ll bet you wanted out of that bed so bad, he couldn’t have done anything to keep you in it, am I right?”

Evette looked at Dr. Hodges, confused, then smiled and cooed happily, squeezing her tightly with her one good arm. She looked down at the stump of her other arm and gave it an imperative coo, then poked at Jules’ legs with a questioning coo.

“Smart girl,” Dr. Hodges said. “Yes, his legs are broke, just like your arm and legs. But if we can fix them, maybe we’ll be able to fix his legs, too. Wouldn’t that be something?”

“You know the only reason I’m still in this chair,” Jules grumbled. “Not approved for human experimentation, my ass.”

“Yes, dear,” Dr. Hodges said, “but Evette isn’t exactly human, is she? And in her condition, there’s no way she could go anywhere outside of your lab. Once she’s recovered enough to be able to give her consent, we can talk to her about your device.”

“I’m just glad the spear went through as high as it did,” Jules said. “Can you imagine how miserable she’d be if she were blind on top of everything else?”

“That would be awful,” Dr. Hodges agreed. “As it is, we don’t even know how much of what we’re saying you understand, do we, hon?” She gently stroked Evette’s cheek.

Evette responded by pressing against her hand and cooing sadly. Suddenly, Evette pushed herself upright, braced against Jules’ chair, and reached over her shoulder, cooing frantically.

“Oh, fuck,” Jules said softly, entirely missing the way Evette’s eye lit up at the word. “Her wings. She can’t feel her wings.” He looked up. “Five? Do we have enough measurements from Evette’s wings to be able to build replacements?”

“Easily,” the voice from the speaker grill replied. “Do you want us to start on them right away?”

“The sooner the better,” Jules said. “We’ll want the wings ready along with the eye and the new limbs.”

“Understood,” Five replied. “I’ll have the work begun immediately.”

Evette looked from Dr. Hodges to Jules, her lip quivering and her eye filling with tears. She rested her head in Jules’ lap and let out a wail of misery, a wail that continued as he stroked her hair, only subsiding eventually into broken-hearted sobs.

“What I don’t understand,” Dr. Hodges whispered, “is why they haven’t begun growing back.”

“I had to cut pretty deep,” Jules answered. “The bastards had poisoned them so badly that the gangrene had spread to the roots. I had to cut all the way down into her back to get out all the silver. As it was, I was afraid at first that I’d missed some, until I remembered she doesn’t need to breathe.”

“So you saved her life by sacrificing her wings,” Dr. Hodges mused. “I’d have done the same, honestly. At least alive, she has a chance of getting them replaced, whether by some of your creations, or magic of any number of varieties. There’s even a slim chance her body will remember how to grow a pair.”

Evette suddenly pushed herself up, reached up and pulled Jules down to her. When he was in reach, she kissed him, passionately enough to cause him to forget to breathe for a few moments.

“I guess she understands us just fine,” Dr. Hodges said, chuckling at Jules’ discomfiture. A moment later, she joined him, as Evette pulled her close and gave her the same kind of intensely passionate kiss she’d given Jules.

“I guess so,” Jules said, smiling at the pink tone the kiss had given to Dr. Hodges’ cheeks. “Evette?”

Evette turned to look at him, a smile of anticipation on her face.

“I’m sorry, but it’ll be a few days before we can put in any of your implants,” Jules said. She drooped visibly, but looked up at him when he continued. “We need to make sure your wound is fully healed before we do any more surgery on you. The bastards who tortured you made it very hard for us to heal you, and we want to make sure there’s no silver left in your body before we cut it open again. Do you understand?”

Evette cooed, looked frustrated, and cooed again, then let out a sob and nodded.

“I know, sweetie,” Jules said. “Some of the damage was to the part of your brain that, in humans, at least, controls the ability to say what you want to say in a way that other people can understand. I take it you used to be right-handed?”

Evette nodded, then frowned and poked at her right arm.

“Don’t do that, sweetie,” Jules said. “I know it’ll heal, but how long can you keep doing that before you have to feed? For that matter, how do you feed, and is it harmful to humans?” Evette cooed, shaking her head frantically. She reached out to Jules and pulled him down for another kiss, then did the same to Dr. Hodges, then looked at Jules with anticipation in her gaze.

“So, you don’t have to be one of the people having sex, to be fed by it?” Jules asked. Evette nodded eagerly, cooing excitedly as she did. Jules chuckled and raised an eyebrow as he looked at Dr. Hodges. “What do you think, Tabby?”

“I think she’s a damned good kisser,” Dr. Hodges said, causing Evette to smile proudly. “I also think it’s been four days since she’s had the opportunity to get any, and it would be downright cruel to deny her.”

“You, my love,” Jules said, as Evette laughed, “are being silly. I don’t know why, but you obviously want me as much as I want you. So, Evette, do you need to be in the same room?” Evette tilted her head as she apparently thought about the question, then nodded.

“Five,” Jules called, “Would you ask Twenty-two to come to Evette’s room?”

“Of course,” Five replied. “He’ll be there in just a minute. He asked if Dr. Hodges brought enough Alprostadil, or if she’ll need to send him out with a prescription.”

“That is a good point,” Dr. Hodges said. “I only brought a single sample bottle, because I wasn’t sure if you were interested. What about your pharmacy?”

“Twenty-two has been collecting my prescriptions for me since shortly after I built him,” Jules said. “It’ll be all right, if you have your prescription pad with you.”

“It’s the same pad I had five years ago, you know,” Dr. Hodges said, laughing. “I don’t get much call to write prescriptions in the coroner’s office.”

“No, I suppose you don’t,” Jules chuckled. When Evette looked up at him and cooed questioningly, he smiled down at her and said, “I was injured a few years ago, that’s why I use this chair to get around. I can feel everything below my waist, I just can’t make any of it work.” Evette put her hand over his groin and cooed sadly at Jules.

“That’s right, sweetie,” Jules said. “Not even that. But Tabby has a medicine that will make it work, for an hour or so. I suppose magic might, too, but you’re too badly hurt to be doing any magic yet, all right?”

Evette gave him an imperious coo and a rebellious glare from her good eye, then her hand began to glow. Dr. Hodges laughed and bent down to kiss the top of Evette’s head.

“Good girl, Evette,” Dr. Hodges said, while chuckling warmly. “You show him he can’t keep you from doing what comes naturally. Looks like we’ll just have to use _your_ bed, given how well your magic is working.”

Evette looked up and cooed happily, then pointed up at her bed. Jules began to rise from his chair, until he let out a panicked cry of, “NO!” Evette cringed away from him and he fell back into his chair, breathing rapidly and feeling at the jacks behind his ears.

“It’s OK, hon,” Dr. Hodges said gently as she knelt beside Evette and drew her into her arms. “He’s not mad at you. He was just afraid. See what he’s touching?” Evette nodded, safe in Dr. Hodge’s embrace. She looked up and cooed curiously.

“He has cables there that plug him into his chair,” Dr. Hodges said. “He makes his chair move by thinking, and the cables connect his brain to a computer that translates his thoughts into commands for his chair. When you started to pick him up, he was afraid the cables would be ripped out of his head, and then I’d have to fix him again.”

Evette hung her head and let out a sob. Dr. Hodges hugged her tightly, while Jules let out a deep breath and looked down.

“It’s OK, sweetie,” Jules said. “Everything is all right. You didn’t hurt me, and I’m not mad at you. After all, you didn’t have any way to know, right?”

Evette looked up and rubbed at her face with her hand, then nodded.

“See?” Jules said, reaching out to gently touch Evette. “It’s all right. Just give me a moment to unplug myself, and then you can do it, OK?”

Evette nodded, smiling, and kissed Jules’ hand. He smiled in return, then retrieved his hand and unplugged the cables from his jacks.

“All right,” Jules said. “It’s safe. You can move me now.”

Evette smiled broadly, and Jules floated into the air, across the gap between his chair and the bed, and touched down softly on the bed, with the only part of his body that wasn’t horizontal a rampant testament to the effectiveness of Evette’s magic.

“Well,” Dr. Hodges said, smiling, as she helped Jules out of his pants. “I’m sure you can get out of that catheter without help, right?”

“Definitely a lot easier in my current condition than it usually is,” Jules said, laughing. “I’ll just take care of this while you slip out of ... Evette?”

Evette was floating in air beside the bed, and pointing at Jules’ catheter while cooing questioningly.

“Remember I said I can’t make anything work below my waist?” Jules asked. Evette nodded, then her eye lit up with understanding. “That’s right, sweetie. Not even my bladder. I wear this so I don’t make a mess, contaminate my work, and smell like a stable.”

Evette floated over the bed and kissed Jules’ forehead, while cooing sympathetically.

“Isn’t this draining, sweetie?” Jules asked, looking at Evette worriedly. She gave him a rebellious glare, for just an instant, then nodded, sighed, and let herself settle back to the floor.

“He’s just worried about you,” Dr. Hodges said, bent down to kiss Evette’s forehead, then dropped her bathrobe. “It’s part of what makes him so adorable, don’t you think?”

Evette cooed excitedly and nodded her head rapidly, while Jules blushed. Dr. Hodges took advantage of his distraction to push his hands aside, finish removing the catheter, and then take advantage of Evette’s magic.

Evette let out a long, contented sigh, as Dr. Hodges took Jules into herself and began moving. As the couple grew closer to climax, Evette’s expression took on a peaceful, almost fulfilled look. When first Jules, then Dr. Hodges, reached their climax, Evette relaxed against the bed and closed her eye, like a human after a good meal.

“Thank you,” Evette breathed, the gratitude painfully obvious in her voice. “I was afraid you wouldn’t under ... I ... can you hear me, or am I just imagining this?”

“If you are,” Jules said, “we are, too. Yes, we can hear you.”

“But why couldn’t I make myself understood before?” Evette asked, confused.

“What do you remember of the night you were hurt?” Dr. Hodges asked, after giving Jules a loving kiss and sliding off the bed to sit beside Evette.

“Fear,” Evette said, shuddering and pressing against Dr. Hodges for protection. “Fear, and white-hot pain, that burned through me and ....” She whimpered and buried her face in Dr. Hodge’s shoulder. “Don’t make me remember. Please?”

“We won’t, hon,” Dr. Hodges said gently, holding Evette close. “We know you haven’t eaten since you got here. Do you know how long before it was since you’d eaten?”

“I ...,” Evette started, then trailed off, a horrified look on her face. “I don’t remember. When I try to remember, all I find is the pain and the fear. What happened to me? Who am I? Why am I here, and why am I hurt like this? Why are my wings gone? Why do I know I should have wings? Why did I need what you did in order to feel like a whole person?”

“We’ll do our best to answer, hon,” Dr. Hodges said, while cradling Evette in her arms. “We’ll help you with the answers we know, and do our best to help you find the answers we don’t know.”

“Thank you,” Evette said softly. “It’s all so confusing, I feel lost, and it’s scary.”

“Do you know what a succubus is, Evette?” Jules asked. “Oh! I should ask, do you remember your name? We’ve been calling you Evette because we didn’t know your name, but now that you’re able to tell us, if you remember, we’d be happy to use your real name.”

“I ... don’t ask me that, please?” Evette said. “When you ask about my name, I get feelings of fear, and a need to run away, as far away as I can.”

“It makes sense,” Five said. “If we knew your true name, it would be dangerous to you.”

“It would?” Evette asked, then nodded slowly. “Yes, that feels true. But why?”

“Because of what you are, hon,” Dr. Hodges said gently. “Do you know what a succubus is?”

“Sure,” Evette said. “A succubus is a demon who goes to humans who call her for sexual purposes. Her job is to satisfy his desires – or hers, if it’s a woman calling – in exchange for the summoner’s agreement to satisfy a future favor for Hell. Of course, it’s not just a job. The succubus needs to experience those sexual encounters in order to get the life energy she needs to survive. Sometimes, if she’s lucky, she can get the sexual energy she needs without being summoned, like if she happens to be near where humans are taking part in sexual activity or if she’s invited to join in or ... if .... That ... that’s what I am, isn’t it? I’m a succubus.”

“That’s right, hon,” Dr. Hodges said, giving Evette a comforting hug. “You’re a succubus. But more importantly, you’re Evette. We don’t know, and don’t want to know, what your true name is. We’ve been calling you Evette up until now, and if we keep using that name, you don’t ever have to risk revealing your true name.”

“You ... don’t care ... that I’m ... a demon?” Evette asked, confused.

“No,” Jules said. “Why should we? As far as we know, you haven’t done anything to harm anyone. Quite the opposite, in fact. You were the one harmed, from what I can tell.”

“But humans always hate and fear demons,” Evette protested. “Well, except for the sick ones who enjoy hurting others. They’re worse than any demons.”

“I agree,” Jules said. “So, which of your questions do you want us to try to answer first?”

“What happened to me?” Evette asked, while huddling against Dr. Hodges, as if afraid of the answer.

“You were tortured,” Jules said, “by a group of sadistic thugs who apparently thought that because you’re a demon, no one would care what they did to you. They didn’t count on me finding you before you could die.”

“Is that why I can’t hear or see on my right side?” Evette asked. “And why my wings and legs and right arm are gone?”

“I’m afraid so,” Jules said. “They shot you with silver bullets, and then spent a lot of time on your wings, with silver weapons. I had to cut them off so you wouldn’t die of silver poisoning.”

“Oh,” Evette whispered, shuddered, and buried her face in Dr. Hodge’s shoulder, sobbing miserably.

“We’re making you new wings,” Five said. “They won’t be as good as the real thing, but you’ll be able to fly again.”

“I will?” Evette asked, her face lighting up “I’ll be able to fly again? Really?”

“Really,” Jules said. “And we’re making you a new eye and ear to replace what they destroyed, and if your arm and legs don’t grow back on their own, I’ll just make new ones to replace them, too.”

“You can do that?” Evette asked, and looked up toward Jules. “If that’s the case, why haven’t you done it for yourself?”

Jules growled wordlessly, gripping the bedding until his knuckles were white.

“He invented a spinal stimulator, but he hasn’t used it on himself,” Dr. Hodges said, “because the law won’t allow him to. And because he’s a regular Boy Scout, even though he doesn’t like to admit it.”

“The law won’t allow him to? Why?” Evette asked.

“Because he’s human,” Dr. Hodges said, “and so any doctor who agreed to implant the device would lose her license, and most likely go to jail, for using a device that’s not approved for use on human patients.” She looked up at Jules and added, “Even if the doctor in question was willing to take that risk, for his sake.”

“But I’m not human,” Evette said, a sly smile crossing her face, “so the doctor in question _could_ implant his designs in me without risking her license, right?”

“That’s right, hon,” Dr. Hodges said, smiling warmly at Evette. “And maybe, just maybe, when it’s shown that it works for you, we could get approval to use it as an experimental treatment for him.”

“So what are we waiting for?” Evette asked, squeezing Dr. Hodges tightly with her left arm. “I want him to be able to walk, so I can show him how grateful I am.”

“I ...,” Jules started, then blushed and looked away.

“It wouldn’t work that way,” Dr. Hodges said, with a faint chuckle. “Our resident Boy Scout, you see, denied his feelings for me for five years, because he thought he would be imposing on me, even though I feel the same way about him. He wouldn’t want you to do that just because you feel grateful to him. He would only accept it if you loved him.”

“Love?” Evette asked, tilting her head curiously. “What is love?”

“Love is when you care so much for someone,” Dr. Hodges cut in, before Jules could say anything, “that their happiness and well-being is as important to you as your own. It’s something entirely different from ‘in love’, which is a kind of temporary insanity that comes from being sexually attracted to someone. Sometimes, love comes from being in love, but just as often, love comes even without the feeling of being in love.”

“That sounds confusing,” Evette said. “But if what you say is true, then I love both of you. You were there when I woke up, and you cared for me, even though you both knew I am a demon, and you didn’t demand anything of me, but you did everything you could to help me. That . . . I’m not sure quite how to describe it, but I feel a bond to both of you. It’s a bond that fills me with the desire to watch over you and care for you and be at your side no matter what, so that you are safe and happy and why am I babbling like this?”

Evette blushed and pressed her face into Dr. Hodge’s shoulder, then mumbled, “And I feel ‘in love’ for both of you, too.”

“And it’s not just gratitude making you say it?” Dr. Hodges asked gently.

Evette raised her head and shot her a hurt look.

Dr. Hodges gently touched her cheek and whispered, “I just had to say it, hon, so you could think about it. _I_ believe you. I just want to be sure that _you_ believe you, too.”

Evette tilted her head and looked curiously at Dr. Hodges, then stretched a bit and kissed her before whispering, “Thank you.”

“Julie?” Evette asked, then repeated it, “Julie? Julie. Julie!” She giggled and reached up to take his hand and kissed it. “Julie? Why did you choose Evette for me?”

“Honestly,” Jules said, blushing. “I thought Eve, at first, but then thought that was too pretentious, so I thought Evette would work. Is it OK?”

“If you thought of it,” Evette said, smiling lovingly at him, “it will always be OK.”

“Careful,” Dr. Hodges said, teasingly. “You’ll inflate his ego if you keep doing that.”

“Is that wrong?” Evette asked, winking at Dr. Hodges. “After all, if his ego inflates, maybe other parts will, too?” Dr. Hodges looked at Evette for a moment, then fell over laughing, pulling Evette with her. “You . . . are you sure we shouldn’t have named you something more appropriate, like Coyote or Raven?”

“I don’t know,” Evette said, pretending to look serious as she squirmed into a more comfortable position in Dr. Hodges’ arms. “Those two aren’t nearly sexy enough to suit me.”

“Oh they aren’t, are they?” Dr. Hodges asked, joining Evette in contented giggles. “I guess we’ll just have to work on getting Julie up to speed, then.”

“I’m in so much trouble,” Jules moaned, while smiling.

###

30 June, 2010

19:30

Today, we implanted the new arm and legs. Evette wanted to be awake for the work, but between Tabby and I, we managed to convince her that she’d be happier if she were unconscious while we were working. Once again, I used my smallest remote, and was amazed at the artistry of her nervous tissue. I’m told that operative neural tissue is always that beautiful, but this was my first opportunity to see healthy, functioning brain tissue from that perspective. Tabby already knew something about how to do the job, given that she did my implants, but with me down inside, able to follow her instructions and weave the connections exactly where she wanted them, the job went, or so she insists, ten times faster and an order of magnitude more smoothly.

I’m worried about tomorrow, though. Tabby said that Evette and I are both going into therapy starting tomorrow, but refuses to give a hint as to what she has in mind. I think Evette’s caught some of my worry: she’s curled up beside me, whimpering with the whimper she only uses when she’s too frightened to speak.

Tabby’s giving me a worried look now, so I’ll close this entry.

#

“She’s empathic, you know,” Dr. Hodges said softly, while looking worriedly at Evette.

“I know,” Jules replied. “Which doesn’t make my state of mind any good for her.”

Evette whimpered and held tightly to Jules with both arms, the aurichalcum muscles of her arm flexing as if they were organic as she clung to him like a drowning woman.

“It’s OK, sweetheart,” Jules said gently, stroking Evette and bending down to kiss her temple. “You know me. I worry about the silliest of things. Like what Tabby plans to do to us as a part of ‘therapy. She’d never hurt us, but I’ve never done therapy before, so I don’t know what it’s going to involve.”

“Never?” Evette asked, looking up at Jules.

“Never,” Dr Hodges said. “By the time he was able to be up and around after his injuries, he had to make depositions for both a criminal trial and a civil trial, and then there were the appointments for PTSD therapy ... which I noticed didn’t exactly take, did it, love?”

“No,” Jules said softly, hugging Evette and Tabby together. “It worked about as well as I expected, but not as well as other people seemed to expect.”

“What do you mean, Julie?” Evette asked, shifting so she could look him in the eyes with her one good eye.

“Other people,” Jules said, “expected that by talking about what Dr. Capacitor did to me, it would leech out the pain and fear, so that I wouldn’t have it any more. I expected that it would help me cope with it, so it wasn’t crippling. I expected that I’d be able to live my life, not that my life would be perfect, the way other people seemed to expect. And it worked, too, right up until I learned that Dr. Capacitor was back in action, using the name Professor Photon.”

“What did he do to you?” Evette asked, reaching up to caress Jules’ cheek with her left hand, so she could feel his skin. “Together, we can beat him, Julie. Together, the three of us are stronger than he is.”

“Together,” Dr. Hodges repeated. “You were alone before, Julie. I had all I could do to repair your physical damage. I trusted the counselors and therapists to repair your emotional damage. That was my failure. I’m sorry. Will you forgive me?”

“Forgive you?” Jules asked, surprised. “But you didn’t do ...,” he started, then saw Evette shake her head, and started over again. “Tabby, my love, I forgive you. I forgive you for trusting the experts to know their jobs. I forgive you for believing that they would ask for your help when they got in over their heads, and trusting that when they didn’t ask for your help, they were doing all right. I forgive you for expecting other people to be as good at their jobs as you are at your own.”

Evette’s smile told Jules he’d said exactly the right thing. When Tabby let out a happy cry and crushed him in her embrace, it confirmed it. Evette gave the two a few moments to embrace on their own, before joining them, only to be drawn in with an enthusiasm that confirmed she was exactly where she belonged. After basking in the love for a few minutes, and enjoying the knowledge that the love she felt from Jules and Tabitha was strong enough that it would sustain her between sexual feedings, she reached out and caressed Jules’ cheek again and spoke gently to him, putting all the love she had into her voice.

“Julie?” Evette asked, looking into his eyes so he could see the love as well as feel it, “What did Dr. Capacitor do to you?”

“It all started when he was chasing a shoplifter,” Jules said, “and she ran past my workshop. You see, back then, I wasn’t a successful inventor like I am now. I was a consultant for the police, doing weapons tests, materials analysis, and other simple tests the department didn’t have the resources to do for itself. She decided to hide in my lab.”

###

“You’re only making this harder on yourself!” Dr. Capacitor’s voice bellowed through every open window and door in the shop.

Jules, oblivious to what had been happening, due to being deeply involved in testing some hearing protectors the department was considering purchasing to replace the old ones in the range, safed his test gun, locked it into its storage box at the firing point in his workshop’s range, and walked toward the workshop’s main door to find out what the bellowing was about. He was about fifteen feet from the front doors, when they blew in as if they’d been hit by an armored car moving at eighty miles per hour. One of the doors flew across the main room and sheared off a structural support before embedding in the concrete wall that separated the range from the rest of the workshop. The other door followed a close path that led it into Jules’ supply of pressurized gas tanks. The door’s impact sheered off the valves on several. The only thing that saved the neighborhood from those tanks doing credible impersonations of rockets was Jules’ insistence on securing each tank with a harness made of heavy cables, each one capable of restraining a tank with four times the pressure of any tank he’d be willing to have in his workshop.

In the doorway, silhouetted against the sunlight, stood Dr. Capacitor, his hands still glowing from the blast he’d used to gain entry to the workshop. Jules, having seen the heads sheered off the gas tanks, was running for the doorway as fast as his feet could carry him. He barely registered the presence of someone in the doorway: enough to yell warnings, but not enough to register who it was.

“Run!” Jules yelled. “Get out! It’s gonna blow! Get under cover! It’s gonna – “

That’s when Dr. Capacitor’s shot punched through him, a pulse of yellow-gold light that entered just to the right of the upper part of his sternum, and exited through the gap between his T4 and T5 vertebrae. Jules dropped like a sack of grain, gasping for air. He felt hands on his shoulders, pulling him over onto his back, and saw Dr. Capacitor’s mask looking down into his face.

“All right, punk!” Dr. Capacitor yelled, loud enough that Jules thought how glad he was to be wearing the ear protectors he was testing, because the voice was loud enough to be painful even with them. “Where are your buddies, punk?”

“Buddies?” Jules asked, the words feeling thick and heavy on his tongue. “What buddies? Nobody ... here ... safer ... tests.”

“Don’t try to lie to me, punk!” Dr. Capacitor yelled, punctuating his words with sharp punches to Jules’ abdomen. “I know your buddies ran in here! Where are they?”

“Dunno ... what ...,” Jules managed to choke out, between gasps for air, before the fuel mixture in the workshop reached flash point.

The fuel/air explosion blew the roof off the workshop, and blew Dr. Capacitor out the door he’d come in. The sounds of sirens indicated that the police, at the very least, if not the fire department as well, had been called well before the explosion. Dr. Capacitor let out a frustrated growl and flew away.

The first to arrive on the scene was a uniformed police cruiser, which was met by the sight of a teenage girl, attempting to drag Jules out of the burning building. She collapsed on the ground when the police took over for her, then let out a squeal of fright and scrambled to hide behind the police car when several acetylene tanks detonated at the same time.

“P-please,” the girl begged, once she’d caught her breath. “A-arrest me?”

“Arrest you?” the senior officer in the patrol car asked. “Why? You just saved this man’s life!”

“So I’ll be safe from Dr. Capacitor,” the girl squeaked. “Dr. Capacitor shot this man, just because he thought he was hiding me.”

“Why was Dr. Capacitor chasing you?” the officer asked.

“Because I had this,” the girl said, pulling a Walkman out of its hiding place under her shirt. “I lifted it at the stereo shop down the street. I didn’t know he was there when I did it!” Her voice was rapidly becoming hysterical. “Please, I’ll go to jail, just don’t let him near me! It’s not worth my life!”

“Dino!” the junior officer said, his face white. “It’s Jules! He’s breathing, but just! And he’s bubbling foam when he breathes! What do I do?”

“You called the paramedics, right?” the senior officer asked.

“Yes,” the junior officer said. “Right away, as soon as I saw the girl hauling him out of the fire.”

“Then find the wound and put some plastic on it,” the senior officer said. “That’ll hold until they can get here and patch him up.” He looked at the girl. “You said Dr. Capacitor shot him?”

“Just like that!” the girl said, while fearfully scanning the sky. “He was running for the doors, yelling to get out of the building, it was going to blow, when Dr. Capacitor just pointed at him, and shot a beam of light that went right through him, like a laser beam!” She pointed at her own chest to make it clear as she spoke. “It hit him right here, and went out the middle of his back, between his shoulder blades.” She looked over toward Jules. “Is he still alive? Oh god, keep him alive. He saved my life!”

“Dr. Capacitor shot him?” the junior officer gasped. “Shitshitshit. What do we do?”

“Keep him alive,” the senior officer said. “Get back to him, damn it!”

“Right, right,” the junior officer said, and ran back to Jules, ripped open his shirt, and let out a gasp of horror.

“Not ... that ... ugly ... am ... I?” Jules choked out. “Need ... plastic ... latex ... wrap ... seal ... hole.” He tried to laugh, only to choke up a mouthful of pink foam. “Tired ... of ... breath ... ing ... foam.”

“OhgodI’msososorry,” the girl sobbed, kneeling beside Jules. She reached under her t-shirt, removed her bra, and pressed the satin surface of one of the cups against the entry wound in his chest. “Don’t die. Please don’t die.”

“Not ... high ... on ... my ... list ...,” Jules choked out. He drew in a deep, bubbling breath, let it out, and smiled up at her. “Thank ... you .... Much ... better.” The girl let out a sob of relief and smiled down at Jules, while holding her bra firmly against his chest.

“That was a good job,” a man’s voice said, the first clue either Jules or the girl had of the arrival of the paramedics. “Not many people would think of using satin, or be willing to sacrifice a Victoria’s Secret bra, to seal a sucking chest wound. You did good. What’s your name?”

“Naomi,” the girl said. “Naomi Strong. I just ... keep him alive. Please?”

“We will, Naomi,” the paramedic said. “You can rest now. You did your part, and did it damned well, in my opinion.”

Jules took Naomi’s hand and squeezed it, smiling at her, then choked out, “You ... call ... me ... when ... it’s ... time .... Understand?”

Naomi looked at Jules, surprised, then tears of gratitude filled her eyes and she nodded. “I will. Thank you. Thank you so much.”

“We ... gotta ... stick ... together,” Jules said, and winked at Naomi. She blushed and nodded, too overcome for anything else.

Naomi turned to the police and held out her hands, sobbing softly. The senior officer shook his head and held the back door of the cruiser open for her, then helped her in. Once she was in the car, the senior officer found the senior fire department official on scene.

“Have you found his security tapes yet?” the senior police officer asked.

“Nothing yet, Dino,” the senior fire officer said. “We still have a lot of rubble to go through to get to where he kept them, though.”

“All right, Tony,” Dino said. “As soon as you get those tapes, bring them to the DA’s office. We have a witness who says this fire was not an accident. If the tapes confirm it, the DA’s gonna have a cape pinned to his wall.”

“A cape?” Tony asked, stunned. “Damn! Count on my guys, Dino. If those tapes are there, we’ll get them to you.”

“Thanks, Tony,” Dino said. “Beers for everyone, on me, if you can get them to us.”

“That’s a damned awful lot of beers,” Tony laughed.

“Yeah,” Dino said, “But it’ll be worth every penny. Anyway, I need to get back to the station. Got a confused kid to deal with. Thanks for your help.”

“Hey, we gotta stick together, right?” Tony said. “Especially if there’s capes involved.”

#

Jules woke up in intensive care, looking up at the most beautiful doctor he had ever seen. She was replacing his bandages – to the accompaniment, now that he was awake, of some pained groans on Jules’ part.

“Oh!” the doctor said. “I’m sorry! You weren’t supposed to be awake yet.”

“Slept too much already,” Jules said, while studying the doctor and deciding he liked what he saw. “Studying wound?”

“I – Yes!” the doctor said, “Yes, I am. You’re the first person to survive one of Dr. Capacitor’s attacks, and I wanted to get a look at the wound while it’s still relatively fresh.”

“Look all you like,” Jules said. “They obviously did some treatment already, or I wouldn’t be breathing so easily.”

“You’re awfully calm about this,” the doctor said. “I think if I’d just woke up in the hospital and had been told I’d been put there by a super hero, I’d be screaming.”

“Oh, trust me,” Jules said, “my accountant’s going to be doing enough of that for all of us. I don’t remember if I got the super hero rider on my insurance policy. I’m pretty sure the department’s policy won’t cover me, since I’m an independent contractor.”

“You’re obviously not a criminal,” the doctor said, “or the officers outside wouldn’t be so worried about what happens to you. So why not sue Dr. Capacitor?”

“If I had the slightest clue how to have him served, I’d be tempted,” Jules said, laughed, then winced. “Damn. Note to self: laughter a bad idea for a while.”

“But it’s such a nice laugh,” the doctor protested, while smiling. “Still, you’re right. I’d advise against it, too.”

“So, doctor,” Jules said, smiling as he extended a hand, “since you’re going to be in here studying me for a while, mind if I get your name?”

“Oh!” the doctor blushed. “Sorry! I hadn’t even thought about that! I’m Tabitha Hodges. I work in the medical examiner’s office. I get assigned all the weird cases.”

“All the weird cases, huh?” Jules asked. “Zombie attacks, alien invasions, that kind of thing?”

“Oh, no!” Dr. Hodges laughed. “Nothing as mundane as that! No, I get assigned the cases where a body is found with its skin and organs in the wrong places, or one side is half of the body of a missing person, while the other side is half of the body of something no one has ever seen, that kind of thing.”

“Sounds like you spend a lot of time keeping your classroom credits up to date,” Jules said, smiling warmly at her.

“Not as much as you’d think,” Dr. Hodges said. “That’s why I just _had_ to come see you. We’ve been getting a lot of mystery bodies showing up, all of them with injuries like yours. Now that I’ve examined your wound, I’m convinced that our mystery bodies were all killed by Dr. Capacitor.”

“The super hero,” Jules said dryly.

“Honestly,” Dr. Hodges said, “down in the dungeon, we say that the only difference between a super hero and a super villain is that a hero comes to help the police during an emergency, while a villain comes to shoot at the police.”

“Down in the dungeon?” Jules asked.

“That’s what we call our offices,” Dr. Hodges said, pulling up a chair to sit beside the bed. “They’re down in the basement, don’t get much sunlight, and Dr. Wiśniewski is a regular tyrant.”

“Yup,” Jules laughed, then winced. “Sounds about right. I don’t get much work from Dr. Wiśniewski. Most of my jobs come from upstairs, in the physical investigations section.”

“Most of your jobs ...,” Dr. Hodges mused, then her eyes lit up. “You’re their pet mad scientist?”

“Please,” Jules groaned, a mixed grin and wince on his face. “Don’t make me laugh. But you’re right. That’s me.”

“Oops!” Dr. Hodges said, blushing. “Sorry.”

Jules reached out and took Dr. Hodges’ hand. “Never apologize for making someone smile, OK? But I think I need to go back to sleep now. If you want to stay, I won’t object.”

“Thank you,” Dr. Hodges said. She squeezed Jules’ hand and blushed as she looked down at him.

#

Jules woke, letting out a scream of pain and clutching at his legs, which were dancing around as if they’d been plugged into a Tesla coil. Despite his efforts, he was unable to either stop the spasms or sit up and reach his legs.

The on-duty nurse ran into the room, followed by two police officers. As soon as she saw the leg spasms, she picked up the room phone, dialed, and spoke quickly and urgently into it. After hanging up the phone, she exited the room, leaving the police officers to look at each other and at Jules with matching expressions of confusion.

The nurse returned after a moment, holding a hypo and a small bottle. She filled the hypo, then injected it into Jules’ IV. Within seconds, his legs stopped dancing, and he collapsed back onto the bed, panting as if he’d run a marathon.

“What was that, Jodie?” one of the officers asked the nurse.

“Muscle spasms,” Jodie replied. “We see a lot of them in spinal cord injuries. Sometimes, they’re worse than what you just saw.”

“Spinal cord injuries?” the officer asked. “You mean Jules’ back is broken?”

“Not exactly,” Jodie said, “but that’s close enough. Whoever it was who shot him, it went through his spine, high enough that he’s never going to walk again. Hell, as high as it was, he’ll probably spend the rest of his life wearing a diaper.”

“Fucking bastard,” the officer spat, his expression shifting from worry to anger and hatred. “Hero, my ass!”

“Hold it, Mike,” the other officer said. “We gotta trust the Chief. Remember what he said – we’re gonna nail the bastard, and they don’t like capes in prison.”

“Oh yeah,” Mike hissed. “You got that right, Frankie. They don’t like capes at all.”

“They don’t like capes?” Jodie asked. “What are you two talking about? Are you trying to say Mr. Lawson was shot by a super hero?”

“That’s right,” Frankie said. “He was shot by Dr. Capacitor. In his own lab. While he was trying to save Dr. Capacitor’s life.”

“While he was –?” Jodie gasped. “What a bastard!” She frowned. “Why hasn’t any of this been in the news?”

“Chief doesn’t want to taint the jury pool,” Frankie said. “He wants to make sure that when Capacitor goes down, he can’t claim he had a prejudiced jury.”

“That’s smart,” Jodie said. “And here I thought the chief was just a political hack-job.”

“Honestly, so did we,” Frankie said. “Until this happened, we all thought the chief was just a political suck-up who wouldn’t know real police work if it slapped him in the face. Now … there’s not a man on the force who wouldn’t back the chief.”

“That’s good to know,” a voice from the doorway said. Frankie’s face went chalk-white, and he and Mike snapped to attention and turned to salute the man in the doorway. He shook his head and waved them off as he walked in. “How is Mr. Lawson today? Any improvement?”

“It’s hard to tell, sir!” Mike said. “His legs just began dancing around like a frog on a wire, until the nurse gave him something.”

“Aren’t you two supposed to be out here?” A doctor asked, as he walked into the room. “Too many people in here, we can’t do our jobs.” He turned to glare at the newcomer, and demanded, “And who are you?”

“Rafael D’Onofrio,” the newcomer said. “You could say I have a vested interest in seeing that Mr. Lawson recovers.”

“Chief D’Onofrio,” the doctor said. “I’m Edgar Vautrine, the doctor in charge of this case. You could say I, too, have a vested interest in seeing that Mr. Lawson recovers. Now. Nurse Willis, would you explain the reason for summoning me?”

“Mr. Lawson experienced severe muscle spasms in both lower quadrants,” Jodie said. “I gave him one gram of methocarbamol IV, and his spasms have subsided.”

“Good, good,” Dr. Vautrine said. “Mr. Lawson, can you hear us?”

“Far too well, it seems,” Jules said. “So, I’m going to be spending the rest of my life in a wheelchair, I understand?”

“That’s correct,” Dr. Vautrine said. “I would have preferred to break the news to you a bit more slowly, but it appears that plan is dead in the water.”

“You could say that,” Jules said dryly. “Hello, Rafe. Sorry about the mess.”

“You let us worry about the mess, Jules,” Chief D’Onofrio said. “You concentrate on getting better. I need you out there, not in here.”

“I’m not going to be much good to you until I get my lab rebuilt,” Jules said.

“Already being taken care of,” Chief D’Onofrio said. “Gil knows your specs, and he’s supervising the reconstruction personally.”

“Good,” Jules said. “I trust him to get it right. Have you caught Capacitor yet?”

“Not yet,” Chief D’Onofrio said. “We’re holding off on trying to catch him until we have every detail of the case sewn up tight. We want to be ready to go to court before we catch him.”

“Good,” Jules said, nodding slowly. “Rafe, I’m going to need something to do while I’m in here, so I don’t go insane. Can you get Dr. Hodges assigned to me, and get me a laptop . . . better yet, get a Mac Genius to come by and take my order?”

“Who’s Dr. Hodges?” Chief D’Onofrio asked.

“She’s the ‘weird cases’ doctor in the ME’s office,” Jules said. “She said my wounds match the wounds on a bunch of bodies they’ve been picking up over the last few months.”

“Really ...,” Chief D’Onofrio said slowly. “I think I’m going to want to talk with her, too. I’ll talk with Wiśniewski and see if I can get him to cut her loose for you. And I’ll phone the Mac store and have them send someone up ASAP.”

“Thanks, Rafe,” Jules said. “Now ...,” he let out a sad sigh, “I guess I need to start getting used to the idea of wearing a diaper for the rest of my life.” He frowned, then blinked and asked, “Rafe, what happened to the girl who saved my life?”

“Miss Strong?” Chief D’Onofrio asked. “She’s in a safe house right now, why?”

“Good,” Jules said. “I told her to phone me when she needed help. She seems like a good kid. Didn’t run when the place started burning down around us, you know? I told her to leave me behind, tried to, anyway, and she refused. Wasn’t going to leave me, even if it meant going to jail.”

“So I’ve heard,” Chief D’Onofrio said, smiling wryly. “She sacrificed her bra to try to seal your chest, and wouldn’t move until the paramedics were there to take over. She’s got the right instincts. Just needs a mentor, you know?”

“If you think your appeal to my better nature is going to work to keep me from giving up to despair,” Jules started, smiling as he tried to sound cranky and annoyed, “you’re probably right,” he finished, chuckling softly. “I’m such a sucker, aren’t I?”

“You’re a Boy Scout,” Chief D’Onofrio said. “You may not want to admit it, but you are. It’s part of what makes you a real hero, unlike those costume-clad thugs that usually get the name.”

“Ha!” Jules protested, weakly. “I _quit_ the Boy Scouts, remember?”

“Because you couldn’t stomach the way they treat gays and atheists, remember?” Chief D’Onofrio said. “I’ll see if she’s interested in having you as her mentor. _You_ see about getting better. I don’t give a damn if you’re stuck in a wheelchair, you’re still the best damned independent examiner in the state, and you’re still the guy who helped me get into more trouble than I care to remember when we were kids.”

“That we did, didn’t we,” Jules said, chuckling. “All right, Rafe. You convince _her_ to not give up, and I’ll do the same. How’s that?”

“You’ve got a deal, Julie,” Chief D’Onofrio said. “He’s all yours, Doctor. It’d be nice to have him up and around in time for court, but the most important thing is making sure he’s as healthy as you can make him before you turn him loose.”

“Don’t worry, Chief,” Dr. Vautrine said. “Patching up the battered, bruised, and broken is what I do. You just make sure that whoever did this to him isn’t out there to do it again when he gets out.”

“That’s the number one item on my agenda, Doctor,” Chief D’Onofrio said. “I can’t tell you anything more than that.”

“That’s quite all right,” Dr. Vautrine said. “You have your secrets, the same as I do. We do what we have to.”

#

“Are you sure you want this?” Dr. Hodges asked, looking over Jules’ shoulder at his laptop’s screen. On the screen was a detailed working diagram of a device that would only work if surgically implanted, that would translate neural impulses into digital signals for a USB port. The neurological side of the device would require threading into major nerves, preferably spinal, but the port could be placed anywhere on the body, dependent only on the body’s response to the materials used.

“Positive, Tabby,” Jules said. “With this, I can directly control any device with a receptor system to match it. I can also get direct sensory input, if the device is wired for it. Think about it, Tabby. I could drive a wheelchair with this, leaving my hands free for actual work! Do you know how frustrating it’s been to be unable to carry things or do actual work while I’m pushing myself around in my chair?”

“All right,” Dr. Hodges said, shaking her head. “You can be the most stubborn man, did you know that?”

“Me?” Jules asked, doing his best to look innocent. “I’m just a mad scientist, don’t you know?”

“Uh-huh,” Dr. Hodges snorted, amused. “Just.”

“Anyway,” Jules said, tearing his face away from Dr. Hodges’ and mentally chiding himself for letting his hormones get the better of him, “it won’t be ready before the trial, so there’s plenty of time to brush up on your technique.”

“A whole week, huh?” Dr. Hodges teased. “You think I’m some kind of miracle worker?”

“No,” Jules said. “Just the best doctor in the state.” _And the most beautiful, but there’s no way I’m going to say that out loud._

“Mr. Lawson?” Naomi asked as she approached on the sidewalk, “were you expecting reporters?”

“Reporters?” Jules gasped, sidetracked from his original intent to tease Naomi about her failure to call him anything other than Mr. Lawson. “Damn! No reporters! I told them!” Jules closed his laptop and stuffed it into a messenger bag that hung from his neck, then began pushing his chair down the sidewalk, away from the direction Naomi had come from. After a few feet, when he began slowing down, Naomi took over pushing. Dr. Hodges gave her a sharp look as she took the handles.

“Look,” Naomi hissed, “I’m stronger than you. You can keep a look-out for reporters, but I’m better suited for pushing.”

“All right,” Dr. Hodges hissed back. “Follow me!”

Dr. Hodges led the way down the sidewalk, then cut onto a service walk that was hidden behind a row of hedges, and led down to a door that had laundry carts parked around it. She pulled the door open, pushed the carts out of the way, and followed Naomi and Jules into the hospital’s utility corridor. Once inside, she picked up a phone and dialed.

“Jodie? Good,” Dr. Hodges said softly into the phone, while waving Naomi down the hall. “It’s Tabby. Are there any reporters up there? Good. We’re coming up the utility elevator. Tell the cops on duty that Julie just escaped being mobbed by reporters, and they’d better make sure none harass him once he gets up there.” She chuckled and nodded as she listened. “That’s right. And you can thank Naomi for noticing them, and for getting him out of there. She’s a good kid. I hope he realizes how good.”

Dr. Hodges hung up and trotted to catch up to Naomi and Jules, then led the way, while Naomi looked after her, blushing. Standing beside a utility elevator, Dr. Hodges watched the numbers flash above the door as it slowly descended to the basement.

The elevator opened, and a reporter, with photographer, spilled out, immediately shouting questions at Jules, so fast he had no opportunity to respond. He gripped the arms of his chair, hard enough for his knuckles to go white, then relaxed and waited for the reporter to take a breath.

“Now,” Jules said, once the reporter had paused in her barrage of questions, “if I’m going to be answering your questions, it would be nice to know who I’m talking to, right? Naomi, do you have your notepad with you?”

“Yes, Mr. Lawson,” Naomi said, confused.

“Good,” Jules said. “Take down their names, would you? Well, miss? If I’m going to be answering your questions, shouldn’t you give me your name, and who you work for, first?”

“All right,” the reporter said, with barely-concealed impatience. “I’m Tiffany Wells, from the Republican.”

“And you, sir?” Jules asked, looking at the photographer and drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair.

“I’m Roger Bush,” the photographer said.

“From the Republican as well?” Jules asked. When the reported nodded, he said, “Thank you. Do you have the names, Naomi?”

“I do, Mr. Lawson,” Naomi said, as she tucked her notepad away.

“Good,” Jules said, pushing his chair into the elevator. “Naomi, Tabby, it’s time for us to go.”

“But!” Tiffany Wells sputtered as Naomi and Dr. Hodges joined Jules in the elevator. “You said you’d answer my questions!”

“No,” Jules said. “What I said was, ‘ _if_ I’m going to be answering your questions’. I never promised I would.” As the doors closed, he added, “Naomi, be sure to give Rafe those names, would you? Maybe this will get the point across to those vultures.”

“Yes sir,” Naomi said, smiling. “I’ll make sure Chief D’Onofrio gets the names.”

Tiffany Wells’ face flashed into panic as the door closed, the last the trio saw of her as the elevator began to rise.

“You’re an evil man, Julie,” Dr. Hodges said, laughing. “I like your style.”

“I’m tired of being harassed,” Jules said, slumping in his chair. “Every time we leave my room, reporters are everywhere. I’m not saying anything until the trial, I’ve said that repeatedly, and they still continue to harass me.”

“Like you said,” Naomi said. “Vultures.”

“I wonder if scheduling a press conference would help,” Dr. Hodges mused. “It sometimes works for us in the dungeon. The good thing would be that you could schedule it for the day after the trial ends, and then if they harass you, you would be able to complain to their publishers, since they have a scheduled date to get their questions answered.”

“It can’t hurt to try,” Jules grumbled. “Do you know how to set something like that up?”

“No,” Dr. Hodges said, “but I’m sure Naomi could ask about it while she’s talking to Chief D’Onofrio.”

“I think it’s a wonderful idea,” Naomi said. “thanks, Tabby. I’ll see if the Chief will do it for us.”

The elevator opened on the level Jules was staying on, with Officers Bay and Fitzsimmons waiting for them.

“This is why we’re supposed to go with you when you go out,” Officer Bay said. “Are you OK?”

“Just tired, Mike,” Jules said. “Naomi needs to call the Chief, OK? There were reporters in the utility elevator.”

“What the fuck?” Officer Fitzsimmons swore. “That was supposed to be locked!”

“I guess we’ll have to discuss that with the reporter,” Jules said. “She had to have a contact inside, if she was able to get into the elevator.”

“The problem,” Jodie said, as she hustled past the officers to check on Jules, “is that damned near everyone on staff has a key, and all it would take is one person with delusions of fame or financial gain to open it up.”

“A reporter looking at trespassing, simple assault, or harassment charges isn’t likely to get a lot of sympathy,” Naomi said, “from her publisher or from other reporters.”

“You’re right,” Jules said, looking up at Naomi, surprised. “How did you know that?”

“Chief D’Onofrio suggested that if I really wanted to help you, I should think about studying either law or criminal justice, so I could help you when your lab is working again. I’ve been doing a lot of internet research when I’m not here.”

“Do you know how much help that would be?” Jules said, smiling warmly. “I’m usually too busy focusing on the technical details of my tests to worry about the legal ramifications, but if you were able to advise me on the legal ramifications, it would make my tests a lot more useful.”

“That’s what the Chief said,” Naomi said, smiling happily as she basked in Jules’ praise. “So, I’m planning to change my major to criminal justice come fall.” Jules smiled and extended a hand to Naomi. She looked at him, confused, then took it. He laughed and pulled her in to a firm embrace, completely missing the unhappy look on Dr. Hodges’ face.

“Welcome to Lawson Industries, Naomi,” Jules said. “You are hereby appointed vice president in charge of legalities.” He held a hand up to his mouth and stage-whispered, “If only I could convince Tabby to leave her cushy government job, I’d have a vice president in charge of forensic medicine, too.”

Dr. Hodges blushed and turned away, wiping at her cheeks. Officer Fitzsimmons quietly gave her a handkerchief, which she used to wipe her eyes before turning back to face Jules.

“All right,” Jodie said. “Enough gathering in the hallway. Let’s get you back in your room, so you can work as much as you want, but remember, your physical therapy appointment is in ninety minutes.”

“She’s a slave-driver!” Jules groaned melodramatically. “A slave-driver, I tell you!”

“Uh-huh,” Jodie said, chuckling as she pushed Jules into his room. “A slave-driver. I’ll be sure to tell her that.”

#

“So,” the defense attorney said, turning away from Jules, who was parked in front of the witness stand in his wheelchair, and looking toward the jury, “the fact of the matter is, you can not positively identify Dr. Capacitor as the one who shot you, isn’t that right?”

“Are you speaking rhetorically, or are you asking me a question?” Jules asked. In a way, he’d been having fun, pushing the defense attorney’s buttons. Even more than the attorney, though, Dr. Capacitor’s buttons had been well and truly mashed, repeatedly, throughout the trial.

“Just answer the question!” the defense attorney demanded.

“That’s what I’m attempting to do,” Jules said. “The problem is, assuming you are actually asking a question, your question is unclearly stated, and is based on a faulty premise.”

“Your honor!” the defense attorney demanded. “Instruct the witness to answer the question!”

“I’m curious,” the judge said. “Why do you say the defense counsel’s question is unclearly stated, and why do you say it is based on a faulty premise?”

“That’s easy, your honor,” Jules said. “For starters, the question wasn’t phrased as a question, but rather as an assertion of fact, which the defense counsel attempted to maneuver me into agreeing to. Since the defense counsel’s assertion appears to be based on the premise that I claimed to have identified Dr. Capacitor as my assailant, his assertion is based on a faulty premise, as I have never made the claim that the defense counsel is attempting to maneuver me into denying.”

“Your honor!” the defense counsel sputtered. “I object!”

“So do I,” the judge said. “I object to the way you are questioning this witness. I will not order the witness’ response stricken from the record, as I consider it an important piece of evidence to be considered in the disposition of this trial. If you do not wish to have similar responses included in the record, I suggest you attempt to confine yourself to proper questioning practices, as you learned in law school.”

Dr. Capacitor let out a low rumble and glared at the judge, and the jury, as if threatening them with personal harm if they found him guilty.

“I would also suggest you advise your client against displays of that nature,” the judge said. “Any future displays of the sort will be considered contempt of court, and dealt with appropriately.”

The defense attorney returned to his table and quietly conferred with Dr. Capacitor, then returned to questioning Jules.

“Very well, then,” the defense attorney said. “Can you, or can you not, identify the individual who attacked you?”

“I can identify the individual who ruptured my spleen, liver, and bowel,” Jules said calmly. “I am not so certain about the individual who shot me and rendered me a paraplegic.”

“Why are you certain about the one, but not the other?” the defense attorney asked, beginning to sweat.

“I am certain about the one,” Jules said, “because he was approximately six inches from my face, screaming at me, as he pummeled me with his fists. I am uncertain about the other, because I saw him silhouetted in the door of my shop, with the light behind him, as I was running toward him, attempting to warn him about the ruptured gas cylinders in my shop.”

“And why were those gas cylinders ruptured?” the defense attorney asked, obviously trying to steer the questioning away from the identification of Jules’ assailant.

“An explosion outside my shop blew both doors off their frames,” Jules said. “One of the doors embedded itself in the concrete wall of the chamber I use when testing police firearms. The other door flew into the area where I store my welding gas cylinders, and sheered off the heads of several of them.”

“How was the door able to sheer off the heads of these gas cylinders?” the defense attorney asked. “Weren’t they stored safely?”

“Actually,” Jules said, “their storage so exceeded safety requirements, that it was being studied by the state fire marshal’s office as the prototype for new safety standards.” He smiled and added, conspiratorially, “From what I’ve been told, the storage system performed so well that the fire marshal’s office has decided to use it as the basis of its new safety standards.”

“No further questions, your honor,” the defense attorney said, doing his best to look confident as he returned to the defense table.

“Does the prosecutor wish to redirect?” the judge asked.

“We do,” the prosecutor said, standing and approaching Jules. “You say you can identify the person who ruptured your spleen, liver, and bowels. Is that person present in this court?”

“I couldn’t say for sure,” Jules said, “without hearing his voice, but his costume is.”

“And would you care to point out that costume?” the prosecutor asked.

“Of course,” Jules said, pointing at Dr. Capacitor. “The costume is sitting at the defense table. If the person wearing the costume were willing to say a few words, I could immediately settle the matter of whether he was the same person who was wearing it when I was crippled by that person.”

“Your honor?” the prosecutor said. “If the person in Dr. Capacitor’s costume could be induced to say these phrases, it would help making that identification.”

The judge looked at the paper the prosecutor handed him, then nodded and handed it to the bailiff.

“Dr. Capacitor,” the judge said. “In the interests of establishing positive identification, you are directed to read the phrases on the paper the bailiff is about to hand you.”

“Your honor,” the defense attorney said, “Dr. Capacitor stands on his fifth amendment rights.”

“You’re telling me,” the judge said, “that your client invokes the Fifth Amendment in defense against identifying himself?”

“Damned right, I do!” Dr. Capacitor growled.

Jules let out a gasp and shrank back in his chair, his face white, then whimpered, “That’s him! That’s him! Oh god, don’t let him near me! That’s him!”

“Shit,” the prosecutor hissed softly, then called out, “Your honor, the prosecution requests a recess.”

“Granted!” the judge declared, banged his gavel, and said, “Recess until one o’clock! Bailiff, let the witness’ attendants through!”

Dr. Hodges and Naomi made it to Jules before the defense team was out of the room. Dr. Hodges spoke quietly with him, while letting him squeeze her hands. Naomi pushed him through the door on the prosecution side of the courtroom, to a small council room away from the crowds and reporters. Inside the council room, the prosecutor was talking quietly with Chief D’Onofrio, and several officers stood guard near the windows and doors.

Naomi and Dr. Hodges pulled up chairs on either side of Jules’ chair, took his hands, and spoke quietly to him, while he crushed both their hands in his terrified grip. Neither tried to get him to be coherent: they simply let him hold them, and quietly assured him they were there, with him.

They had been in the council room for about twenty minutes, long enough for lunch orders to be taken, but not delivered, when the DA approached Jules, Naomi and Dr. Hodges.

“Julie?” Dr. Hodges asked, her voice just barely loud enough to draw his attention to her. “Mr. Sanchez wants to talk with you.”

“Mr. Sanchez?” Jules asked, confused. “Oh! Right. Umm ... all right, I guess.”

“We’ll be right here,” Naomi said, loudly enough for the DA to hear her, squeezing Jules’ hand. “Neither one of us is going to leave you alone an instant sooner than we have to.”

“And no one wants them to leave you,” Mr. Sanchez said. “I just need to ask your opinion about some things. Can you help me, Mr. Lawson?”

“I’ll try,” Jules said. “What do you need to know?”

“What punishment would you think is the least you would consider just,” Mr. Sanchez asked. “I personally think he should spend the rest of his life in prison, but if his lawyer were to offer a deal, in exchange for his plea of guilty, what would be the least you would accept as punishment for him?”

Jules shuddered, squeezed both Naomi and Dr. Hodges’ hands tight, and let out a soft sob. After a moment, he took as deep a breath as he was capable of, raised his head, and looked at Mr. Sanchez.

“What would you accept if you were in my seat, Mr. Sanchez?” Jules demanded. “I can never walk again, I had to have a colostomy, just so I wouldn’t die from the ruptured bowel he gave me, I have to wear an oxygen concentrator to make up for the impaired breathing he gave me, I have to wear a catheter twenty-four hours a day, so I don’t smell like a stable and leave a trail of urine everywhere I go, and the only reason I have tinnitus, instead of being deaf, is that I was wearing the hearing protectors I was testing for the police department when he attacked me. What would _you_ accept as justice, if you were in my place?”

“I can’t say,” Mr. Sanchez said, pulling up a chair and sitting in it, “since if I were in your case, I might have killed myself rather than endure life like that.”

“I have three reasons I haven’t done that,” Jules said, bitterly. “Two of them are sitting beside me. The third is, if I were to kill myself, that bastard out there would win by default. How many people are speaking for all his victims in the morgue? Who is bringing him to account for murdering all those people? The only reason I can see that he’s in front of a judge right now is that I survived his attack and am willing to speak up.”

“All his victims in the morgue?” Mr. Sanchez asked. “What are you talking about?”

“I work in the coroner’s office,” Dr. Hodges cut in. “I’m one of the staff medical examiners. We have had, over the last six months, nearly three dozen clients with wounds that exactly match the wound that crippled Mr. Lawson. No one has pursued their cases, because every one of them has been a homeless person. In fact, until Mr. Lawson’s attack, we didn’t even have a cause of injury to pin on them. Now, though, I’ve made my report to Dr. Wiśniewski, and mentioned it to Chief D’Onofrio. Until I’m called to testify in court, there’s nothing more I can do.”

“Interesting,” Mr. Sanchez said. “Very interesting. If that’s the case, and we can definitely certify that the wounds on your corpses match the wound that crippled Mr. Lawson, this conversation is extremely premature.”

“I am willing to certify that,” Dr. Hodges said. “All my test results will support my certification.”

“If you’ll excuse me, I need to speak with Chief D’Onofrio,” Mr. Sanchez said. “He should have told me about your report.”

Mr. Sanchez stood and approached Chief D’Onofrio and the prosecutor. After the requisite round of hand-shaking, they began talking quietly. The conversation quickly became animated, until suddenly, Chief D’Onofrio’s voice cut through the room with, “I don’t know what to tell you. Dr. Wiśniewski told me there were no such reports!”

“I’ll be right back, Julie,” Dr. Hodges said softly. “It sounds as if I need to get in on this.”

Dr. Hodges squeezed Jules’ hand and approached the DA, the Chief, and the prosecutor.

“Gentlemen,” Dr. Hodges said, when she was close enough to be heard clearly. “Do I understand that Dr. Wiśniewski is claiming I never gave him the reports I mentioned to both the Chief and the District Attorney?”

“That’s exactly right,” Chief D’Onofrio said. “He didn’t come right out and call you a liar, but he did state that he never received any reports such as you described to me.”

“That’s interesting,” Dr. Hodges said, “because I have a sealed evidence envelope, with Dr. Wiśniewski’s signature on it, that contains copies of all of those reports, plus the supporting data for each one. I didn’t want to have to use it, because I had hoped my impressions of things were wrong, but it’s obvious that I have no choice but to use it.”

“Provide me with that envelope,” Mr. Sanchez said, “and we’ll see what we can do with it. Chief, if she does provide me with an envelope that contains what she says it does, you’re going to have to arrest Dr. Wiśniewski for evidence tampering.”

“I understand,” Chief D’Onofrio said, then groaned. “I hate situations like this. Remember the last time?”

“I do,” Mr. Sanchez said. “Let’s hope it doesn’t get that messy.” He looked at Dr. Hodges. “Recess is over in an hour and a half. Can you get that envelope to me by then?”

“Easily,” Dr. Hodges said. “All I need is your order to get it from the evidence room in the police department.”

“Why not in the coroner’s office?” Mr. Sanchez asked.

“The reason I made up that envelope is that I suspected someone in my office of tampering with evidence,” Dr. Hodges said. “I would hardly leave it where it could be found by them.”

“Good point,” Mr. Sanchez said. “Just a moment, then.”

Mr. Sanchez took a piece of paper from the prosecutor, wrote out instructions on it, signed it, then handed it to Chief D’Onofrio for his signature. Once Chief D’Onofrio had signed it, he handed it to Dr. Hodges, who nodded, tucked it into her suit, and crossed the room to Jules.

“I’m going to be downstairs for a few minutes, Julie,” Dr. Hodges said gently. “Naomi’s going to be right here, though, OK?”

“I’ll survive,” Jules said, smiling weakly. He reached up to touch Dr. Hodges’ cheek with his free hand. “Keep safe, Tabby.”

“Always, Julie,” Dr. Hodges said, smiling gently. “Always.”

Jules took both Naomi’s hands in his, as Dr. Hodges left the room.

Dr. Hodges returned a little over a half hour later, her suit mussed and a bruise forming on her left cheek. She handed the evidence envelope to Mr. Sanchez without saying a word, then returned to her post beside Jules, giving Naomi a grateful smile as she did.

“Tabby?” Naomi asked. “Do you need me to get you some ice or painkillers?”

“I’ll be fine,” Dr. Hodges said. “It’s just a little bump.”

“You wouldn’t let me get away with that,” Jules chided gently, then put on an air of innocence and asked mock-hopefully, “Would you?”

“No,” Dr. Hodges answered, laughing. “No, I wouldn’t.” She lowered her voice and continued, “All right, this is just between the three of us, OK?”

“Of course,” Jules said, squeezing Dr. Hodges’ hand.

“It’s just us three,” Naomi agreed.

“All right,” Dr. Hodges said. “You know I had those weird cases where people were killed, with injuries that matched yours, right? Well, I did the full work-up on every one of them, made my usual copies of all my work, and filed the reports with Dr. Wiśniewski.”

Jules nodded. “I remember you mentioning them.”

“Well, when I mentioned them to Chief D’Onofrio,” Dr. Hodges said, “he asked Dr. Wiśniewski about them. Dr. Wiśniewski denied having ever seen the reports, despite my copies of those reports having his signature on them.”

“Bastard,” Naomi hissed.

“More than you know,” Dr. Hodges said. “Luckily, I had copies, and I’d already run into problems with my reports vanishing after they’d been filed, so I had made up a full set of copies and filed them in the police evidence room, just in case.”

“You sure that was a good idea?” Jules asked. “All it takes to get something from evidence is the right forms and signatures.”

“So I discovered,” Dr. Hodges said. “When I went downstairs to get the envelope out of evidence, I discovered that Dr. Wiśniewski had already retrieved it, less than ten minutes before. How he knew it was there, I don’t know. Hopefully, the Chief will be able to get it out of him.”

“So he had it in his office?” Naomi asked.

“He did,” Dr. Hodges said. “He and I had a short and pointed discussion over whether justice was more valuable than dollars. Justice won.” Dr. Hodges sat back, a smug smile on her face, and squeezed Jules’ hand.

After thirty seconds, when it was painfully obvious she wasn’t going to continue, Jules snorted and said, “Don’t you just love how she leaves us hanging like that? Justice won. And that’s all she’s going to say, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” Dr. Hodges said. “After all, I’ll probably have to give a deposition to the DA, and I wouldn’t want it to sound rehearsed.”

The prosecutor approached, carrying the envelope Dr. Hodges had given to the DA, and asked, “Dr. Hodges, where did you get these files?”

“From the coroner,” Dr. Hodges said. “Dr. Wiśniewski, to be precise.”

“He claimed there were no records of this kind in his office,” the prosecutor said.

“Either he was mistaken, or he was lying,” Dr. Hodges said. “This envelope was on his desk not ten minutes ago, and as you can see from the signatures on it, he took it from the police evidence locker not ten minutes before that.”

“I see,” the prosecutor said. “I also see that you were the one who signed it in to the evidence locker. Why?”

“You’ll probably want me to be under oath before you ask me any more questions,” Dr. Hodges said. “My answers are going to start a whole new investigation.”

“I hate hearing things like that,” the prosecutor said. “I know Mr. Sanchez ordered Chief D’Onofrio to arrest Dr. Wiśniewski. Does this have anything to do with that?”

“Yes,” Dr. Hodges said. “So be very very careful with how you treat it. It’s going to be an important piece of evidence, not only for this trial, but also for any trials that come out of Dr. Wiśniewski’s arrest.”

The prosecutor walked away, frowning and looking at the envelope as he did.

“I get the feeling his job just got an order of magnitude more difficult,” Jules said.

“He can’t justify accepting a plea deal, now that he has those,” Naomi said. “I don’t know what’s in them, but since they’re available to him, he has to either pretend they don’t exist, or make copies for the defense and deal with them in court.”

“Defense will probably try to get them barred,” Jules muttered darkly. “They weren’t available when the trial started, so they’ll claim that they either call for a mistrial or should not be entered into evidence at all.”

“A mistrial would be good, though,” Naomi said. “It would mean we would start over from the beginning, including the new evidence.”

“We should be so lucky,” Jules grumbled.

“You never know,” Dr. Hodges said. “Weirder things have happened. I should know.”

#

“So, why did you conceal the existence of this evidence, Dr. Wiśniewski?” the prosecutor asked.

“I was paid ten thousand dollars for each case with injuries of this type that I buried,” Dr. Wiśniewski said. “So far, a total of three hundred twenty thousand dollars.”

“And who paid you to do this?” the prosecutor asked.

“Him,” Dr. Wiśniewski said, pointing at Dr. Capacitor. “He paid me.”

“I would like the record to note that Dr. Wiśniewski is pointing at Dr. Capacitor,” the prosecutor said.

“Objection!” the defense attorney yelled. “Prejudicial!”

“Overruled,” the judge said.

“No further questions, your honor,” the prosecutor said.

“Does the defense have any questions for the witness?” the judge asked.

“Yes, your honor,” the defense attorney said, as he approached the witness stand. “Dr. Wiśniewski, am I to understand you correctly, that you claim you buried the evidence of thirty-two murders?”

“That is correct,” Dr. Wiśniewski said.

“Yet we have these files here today?” the defense attorney asked.

“Yes,” Dr. Wiśniewski muttered, glaring darkly at Dr. Hodges.

“How can that be?” the defense attorney asked.

“Copies of the files were hidden in the police evidence locker,” Dr. Wiśniewski said.

“So, are we to understand that you attempted to hide the evidence of thirty-two murders in the police evidence locker?” the defense attorney asked, doing his best to look incredulous.

“No,” Dr. Wiśniewski said, glaring at the defense attorney now.

“Well then, enlighten us,” the defense attorney said. “How did this all happen?”

“One of my staff figured out that evidence was going missing,” Dr. Wiśniewski said, “and hid copies of the files in the evidence locker, so she could retrieve them if the originals vanished.”

“And which one of your staff did this?” the defense attorney asked.

“Dr. Hodges,” Dr. Wiśniewski said.

“The same Dr. Hodges who is now acting as Mr. Lawson’s personal attendant?” the defense attorney asked. “Is it appropriate for a medical examiner to act as the personal attendant of a private citizen?”

“Objection!” the prosecutor barked. “Irrelevant!”

“Sustained!” the judge ordered.

“Tell us, Dr. Wiśniewski,” the defense attorney said, as smoothly as if he’d planned for the objection, “how you can be certain that it was Dr. Capacitor who paid you three hundred and twenty thousand dollars to betray your duty.”

“After seeing him thirty-two times,” Dr. Wiśniewski said, “he’s kind of hard to mistake.”

“But it could be anyone under that mask, couldn’t it?” the defense attorney asked. “Even me.”

“Could be,” Dr. Wiśniewski said, “but if you were wearing it, it’d be obvious you weren’t him.”

“How can you be so sure?” the defense attorney asked. “After all, you just admitted it could be anyone under that mask.”

“Body language,” Dr. Wiśniewski said. “Your body language and his are entirely different.”

“Now really,” the defense attorney said, “can you really be so sure?”

“Given that I wrote the standard textbook on body language?” Dr. Wiśniewski said, “I think I can.”

The entire courtroom broke into laughter at Dr. Wiśniewski’s response, while the defense attorney looked as if he’d just swallowed a green persimmon.

“No further questions, your honor,” the defense attorney said, doing his best to retain some dignity.

“The prosecution wishes to redirect, your honor,” the prosecutor said.

“You may proceed,” the judge said.

“Dr. Wiśniewski,” the prosecutor said, “you say you wrote the standard textbook on body language. Would you care to elaborate?”

“Body Language and Physical Identification,” Dr. Wiśniewski said. “If I were to rely on my royalty checks, I’d guess it’s used in at least two thirds of the psychology and criminal justice programs in the country.”

“We’ll be establishing that independently, you realize,” the prosecutor said. “For now, can you be certain that the person sitting at the defense table is the same person who paid you to conceal the evidence in question?”

“Absolutely,” Dr. Wiśniewski said. “Ten thousand dollars per victim, for a total of thirty-two victims. He came in person to pay me after each victim. Sometimes before my office knew there was a victim.”

“Why would you accept money to conceal evidence?” the prosecutor asked. “After all, you’ve been the Coroner for over twenty years.”

“It wasn’t the money,” Dr. Wiśniewski said. “It was my grandchildren. As long as I accepted his money, he promised that he wouldn’t kill my grandchildren.”

“They’re _dead_ , you hear me Wiśniewski!” Dr. Capacitor roared. “ _Dead!_ ”

“Order!” the judge barked. “Order! Bailiff! Restrain the defendant!”

The bailiffs moved to restrain Dr. Capacitor, whose attorney groaned and put his head in his hands. Dr. Capacitor’s hands glowed, then suddenly went dark, as the entire courtroom blacked out.

“Gentlemen,” a voice from the darkness said. “I believe you’ll find Dr. Capacitor is currently incapacitated. You may restrain him now.” When the lights came on, a man in a black trench coat and fedora, wearing red goggles over his eyes, stood behind the barrier between the spectators and the prosecution and defense tables.

“My apologies, your honor,” said the man in black, “but I could not stand by when it appeared he was about to shoot someone.”

“No need to apologize,” the judge said. “Would you be so kind as to identify yourself?”

“I am known as Blackout,” the man in black said, then peeled off his goggles to reveal his face. “I am also known as Frederick Black. I don’t normally go around doing things like this, but given Dr. Capacitor’s reputation, I thought it might be a good idea to attend his trial in case something like this happened.”

“It’s a good thing you were here, Mr. Black,” the judge said. “If you would be so kind as to remain until the trial is over, I would appreciate it.”

“Count on it, your honor,” Mr. Black said. “I’m probably the only person here who’s immune to Dr. Capacitor’s powers, so I’ll be happy to assist your bailiffs as needed.”

“Does the prosecution have any further questions?” the judge asked.

“No further questions, your honor,” the prosecutor said.

“Defense?” the judge asked.

“Defense requests to approach the bench,” the defense attorney said, his voice shaking.

“Approach,” the judge said.

The defense attorney and the prosecutor approached the bench.

“Your honor,” the defense attorney said quietly, his voice still shaking, “I would like to ask, no, I’m begging. Please put my family into witness protection. Today, if not sooner.”

“Why?” the judge asked.

“Because I’m about to tell Dr. Capacitor that I quit,” the defense attorney said. “I can no longer, in good conscience, continue to represent that homicidal psychopath. And when I tell him that, he’s going to threaten my family, the same way he threatened Dr. Wiśniewski’s family.”

“Tony,” the judge said, “we need you. You’re the best defense attorney in the state, and this trial is going to establish precedents for dealing with super heroes gone bad. Besides, you know he’s going to be appealing, and the better his representation, the less he has to go on in an appeal.”

“None of that matters if my family is dead,” the defense attorney said. “Find yourself a lawyer who doesn’t have a family. Find yourself someone who doesn’t care if his client threatens him. Just . . . I can’t take any more, your honor.”

“Hold it,” the prosecutor said. “Capacitor’s been threatening you?”

“Yes,” the defense attorney said. “It’s always the same. If I don’t get him off, he’ll be coming after me as soon as he’s out, and I’ll wish I’d gotten it as good as Lawson.”

“Would you be willing to say that under oath?” the prosecutor asked.

“Hell yes,” the defense attorney said. “Anything, just keep that raving psychopath away from me.”

“Is it possible, your honor?” the prosecutor asked. “I know attorney-client privilege covers anything Capacitor said to him in his professional capacity, but personal threats are another matter, wouldn’t you say?”

“I have to agree,” the judge said. “Tony, if you’re willing to testify regarding the threats Capacitor made to you, we’ll get you and your family into witness protection. Will Pete and the kids be able to manage?”

“I’ll phone him and tell him to be ready,” the defense attorney said. “They’ll have to manage.”

“All right,” the judge said. “I’ll order a recess until tomorrow morning. Joe, you get the verification of Wiśniewski’s expertise. Tony, you get Pete and your kids packed and ready for the Feds. I’ll write the witness protection order this afternoon.”

“Thank you, your honor,” the defense attorney said, letting out a sigh of relief.

“All right, both of you get back to your places,” the judge said. As the attorneys returned to their places, the judge turned his attention to Dr. Wiśniewski. “Dr. Wiśniewski, you are dismissed for now. There may be more questions for you later.” Then he addressed the court. “Court is in recess until eight o’clock tomorrow morning. Dr. Capacitor, in light of your behavior in this court, your bail is revoked, and you are remanded to the county jail for the duration of this trial.”

“You can’t do that!” Dr. Capacitor roared, as bailiffs surrounded him with manacles. “I’m a hero, do you hear me! A hero!” He glared at the defense attorney and demanded, “Tell him! Object! Do something!”

“I am doing something,” the defense attorney said. “I’m firing you. I will no longer act as your attorney. Find someone else, if you can.”

“You’re dead, you hear me!” Dr. Capacitor roared. “You, and anyone else you care about! Dead!”

“Chief D’Onofrio?” the defense attorney said, “If you have a few minutes, I’d like to swear out an aggravated assault complaint.”

“Of course,” Chief D’Onofrio said. “I’d be happy to take it.”

The courtroom suddenly went dark, and there was a thud. When the lights came on again, Dr. Capacitor was unconscious, and Blackout was standing over him.

“My apologies, gentlemen,” Blackout said. “I’m afraid your tasers would have only enhanced his powers. From my studies, I have determined that he chose the name he did, because he absorbs energy and stores it in his body, then uses it to create the light-based weaponry you’ve heard about – and, in some cases, witnessed. That would include the electrical energy your tasers use.”

“Mr. Black,” Chief D’Onofrio said, “Would you consent to being sworn in as an officer for the duration of this trial?”

“If that’s what it takes to ensure Dr. Capacitor doesn’t harm anyone,” Blackout said, “I’m willing to do so. Normally, I try to avoid interfering in police business, but it appears you need my assistance for the duration.”

“I appreciate it,” Chief D’Onofrio said. “If you would follow me and Mr. Wilson, we’ll get that taken care of right away.”

“Of course,” Blackout said, joining Chief D’Onofrio and the defense attorney.

#

“State your name for the record, please,” the prosecutor said.

“Anthony Wilson,” Dr. Capacitor’s former defense attorney said.

“And your profession?” the prosecutor asked.

“Attorney. I specialize in criminal defense,” Mr. Wilson said.

“And what is your interest in this case, Mr. Wilson?” the prosecutor asked.

“I used to be Dr. Capacitor’s defense attorney,” Mr. Wilson said.

“Used to be,” the prosecutor repeated. “So you are no longer his attorney?”

“That is correct,” Mr. Wilson said.

“Why is that?” the prosecutor asked.

“I couldn’t take the threats any more,” Mr. Wilson said.

“Threats, Mr. Wilson?” the prosecutor asked.

“Your honor,” Dr. Capacitor’s new defense attorney said, rising and leaning on his cane, “while I appreciate the effort the prosecutor is taking with establishing Mr. Wilson’s identity and motives, could we please get on with it?”

“We’re getting there, Mr. Barnett,” the prosecutor said.

“Yes,” Mr. Wilson said. “Threats. From Dr. Capacitor.”

“Are you trying to tell us that your client threatened you?” the prosecutor asked.

“I must object, your honor,” Mr. Barnett said. “Attorney-client privilege.”

“Overruled,” the judge said. “Proceed, Mr. Wilson.”

“Yes,” Mr. Wilson said. “He told me that if I didn’t get him off, he was going to kill me, and anyone I care about.”

“Did you consider these threats credible?” the prosecutor asked.

“Yes, I did,” Mr. Wilson said, “given the evidence presented in this trial, I considered these threats very credible.”

“You didn’t consider them to be hyperbole?” the prosecutor asked.

“No, I didn’t,” Mr. Wilson said. “I believed Dr. Capacitor, absolutely, when he made those threats.”

“And you damned well should!” Dr. Capacitor bellowed. “You’re dead! You hear me! Dead!”

“Bailiff,” the judge said, “would you be so kind as to gag the defendant?”

“No further questions, your honor,” the prosecutor said, as Blackout gripped Dr. Capacitor by the shoulders, and a uniformed bailiff strapped his head into a leather muzzle, like those used for prisoners who had attempted to bite others.

“Would the defense like to cross-examine the witness?” the judge asked.

“The defense would, your honor,” Mr. Barnett said. He rose to his feet and walked toward the witness stand, using a rosewood cane with a carved eagle handle to support himself as he walked. “Tell me, Mr. Wilson, were the threats you mentioned outbursts like the one my client just made?”

“No,” Mr. Wilson said. “No, they were nothing like that.”

“Nothing like that, you say,” Mr. Barnett asked. “If they were nothing like that, then just what _were_ they like?”

“The first one came after Mr. Lawson’s testimony,” Mr. Wilson said. “Dr. Capacitor told me, ‘I hired you because everyone says you’re the best in the business. Well, I’m the best in my business, too. And my business is putting people in the grave. You don’t want to become my business. Which you will, if you don’t get me off.’ If you’d like, I can play a recording of it. I record all my meetings.”

“Are you trying to tell us that Dr. Capacitor, a recognized super hero, was stupid enough to utter a threat like that, when he knew you were recording him?” Mr. Barnett asked.

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you,” Mr. Wilson said. “And he repeated his threat, with variations, every time something happened in the trial that looked bad for him.”

“And you have recordings of every incident, I suppose?” Mr. Barnett asked.

“I do,” Mr. Wilson said. “You have copies of those recordings in your evidence file, as does the prosecutor.”

“No further questions, your honor,” Mr. Barnett said, returning to the defense table.

“Would the prosecution like to redirect?” the judge asked.

“No, your honor,” the prosecutor said.

“Do you have any further witnesses?”

“No, your honor,” the prosecutor said. “We yield to the defense.”

“Is the defense prepared to call its first witness?” the judge asked.

“I am, your honor,” Mr. Barnett said. “As my first witness, I call Jules Lawson.”

Jules blinked and looked worriedly at Naomi and Dr. Hodges, both of whom patted his arm and smiled reassuringly at him. Dr. Hodges nodded to Naomi, who pushed him up to the witness stand and locked his wheels in place, “coincidentally” uncovering his ostomy bag, then checked the setting on his oxygen concentrator, before returning to her seat. Jules blushed and readjusted his shirt to cover his bag, but not before everyone in the jury box had had a chance to see it, and see his distressed reaction when it was exposed.

“Did they get a look?” Dr. Hodges whispered to Naomi when she returned.

“They couldn’t help it,” Naomi said. “Especially if he reacted the way we expected him to when he realized it was exposed.”

“He did,” Dr. Hodges said, smiling at Naomi.

Since Jules had been sworn in once already, he was quickly readied for Mr. Barnett’s questions.

“Are you quite comfortable, Mr. Lawson?” Mr. Barnett began.

“Not really,” Jules said. “I hate to say it, but I’d much rather be sitting up there,” he pointed his thumb over his shoulder, at the witness box, “than down here.”

“You have experience with sitting up there?” Mr. Barnett asked.

“Over the last ten years,” Jules said, “I’d estimate I’ve spent a few hundred hours sitting in that chair. Last time was just as uncomfortable as the first.”

“A few hundred hours, you say,” Mr. Barnett said. “I take it, then, that you’re something of an old hand at testifying in court?”

“As an expert witness, yes,” Jules said. “As a victim, never.”

“And what are you an expert at?” Mr. Barnett asked.

“Materials, mostly,” Jules said. “Fracture points, heat tolerance, impact resistance, I could go on for a few hours, but everyone here would probably be asleep long before I was done.”

A few members of the jury suppressed snorts of laughter.

“That’s very likely, Mr. Lawson,” Mr. Barnett said. “However, you are not an expert at identification, am I right?”

“Depends on what I’m asked to identify,” Jules said. “Some things I know from my training, some from experience, and some will be burned into my brain until the day I die.”

“I see,” Mr. Barnett said. “And some, perhaps, might have been helped along by previous exposure to other sources of identification?”

“I’m afraid I don’t follow you,” Jules said. “Would you mind clarifying?”

“Your identification of Dr. Capacitor as your assailant,” Mr. Barnett said. “Might that not have been due to viewing of the surveillance videos the prosecution played in court?”

“Only if you have a time machine,” Jules said.

“Excuse me?” Mr. Barnett asked.

“Given that I was not allowed to see those videos until they were played for the court,” Jules said, “and given that they were not played until after my testimony, you would have to believe in time travel in order to believe that they could have influenced my testimony.”

“We have only your word for that, of course,” Mr. Barnett said.

“You also have the evidence of the tapes themselves,” Jules said. “Unless you want to call both the police and District Attorney’s offices into question, their chain of evidence documentation will verify that I was never allowed to see the tapes, or their contents.”

“Very well,” Mr. Barnett said, moving on smoothly. “There is the matter of your reaction to hearing Dr. Capacitor’s voice. A reaction I noticed just a few minutes ago, when the judge ordered my client gagged. Is that not a touch . . . melodramatic?”

“You tell me,” Jules said. “Have you ever experienced terror that is so overwhelming that you feel as if your heart is going to burst from fear?”

“No,” Mr. Barnett said. “No, I can’t say as I have.”

“Then don’t call my response melodramatic,” Jules said. “Until you have experienced something similar, and were able to suppress your own terror. As it is, it’s all I can do to be in the same court with him, without attempting to either flee or take my own life to escape him.”

“It can’t be as bad as all that, can it?” Mr. Barnett said, with just a hint of false solicitousness.

“It can’t be as bad as all that?” Jules asked. “The man burned down my home, with me inside it! He shot me, rendered me a paraplegic, incontinent, impotent, and missed my heart by less than a half an inch! He beat me so badly that I have had to endure multiple surgeries to repair the organs that could be repaired, and transplants to replace the organs that couldn’t – organs he destroyed with his fists! Every time I close my eyes, I see his face, right here, as he beats me and screams at me! You go through all that, and then try to say it can’t be as bad as all that!”

“I’m afraid that’s not likely for me,” Mr. Barnett said. “Given my age and condition, if I’d gone through all you had, I probably would have died before I made it to my first surgery.”

“Good god,” Dr. Hodges said softly, “I’d swear he’s sabotaging his own client!”

“It sure sounds like it,” Naomi agreed.

“No further questions, your honor,” Mr. Barnett said, returning to his table.

“Would the prosecution like to cross-examine the witness?” the judge asked, giving Mr. Barnett a puzzled look.

“Yes, your honor,” the prosecutor said, as he approached Jules.

“Just to verify,” the prosecutor asked, “you did not see the video from your security cameras before it was played in court?”

“That’s right,” Jules said. “It was seized and entered into evidence by the police while I was still in the emergency room, and I was never allowed to see it until it was played here.”

“Have you ever been under psychiatric care, of any kind?” the prosecutor asked.

“Before now?” Jules replied, “No. But I’m going to be looking for the best trauma therapist I can find, once this trial is over. I can’t take any more of this.”

“No further questions, your honor,” the prosecutor said.

Naomi retrieved Jules and wheeled him back to his seat, just in time to hear her own name being called as a witness. She took her seat in the witness box and was sworn in, then muttered under her breath, “I see what he means. I’ve sat in better chairs in a lecture hall.”

“What was that, Miss Strong?” Mr. Barnett asked. “I’m afraid my hearing isn’t as good as it used to be.”

“Oops,” Naomi said. “Sorry. I just said that I see what Jules means about this chair. I’ve sat in better chairs in a lecture hall.”

“I take it from that, that you are a student?” Mr. Barnett asked. “What’s your major?”

“My major was history,” Naomi said. “Starting this fall, it’s going to be criminal justice.”

“Why the change?” Mr. Barnett asked.

“Dr. Capacitor,” Naomi said. “And Officer Smolenski.”

“Please, elaborate,” Mr. Barnett said.

“I was in Mr. Lawson’s shop when Dr. Capacitor attacked it,” Naomi said. “You probably saw me in the security video. I saw Dr. Capacitor shoot Mr. Lawson, and then beat him half to death, before fleeing the scene when the police sirens became close enough to hear. I couldn’t leave Mr. Lawson in there to burn to death, so I dragged him outside, where he could get help.”

“And why did this lead to a change in your major?” Mr. Barnett asked.

“Dr. Capacitor acted as if he could get away with anything, because he’s a super hero,” Naomi said. “He was willing to kill over a twenty dollar cassette player. If we rely on people like that to protect us from criminals, what kind of society do we have?”

“What do you mean, a twenty dollar cassette player?” Mr. Barnett asked.

“Dr. Capacitor was chasing me, because he saw me take a Walkman from an electronics store without paying for it,” Naomi said. “He terrified me so much that I hid from him in Mr. Lawson’s shop, never expecting that he would be willing to nearly kill an innocent person in order to find me.”

“So you’re saying that Mr. Lawson’s injuries came about,” Mr. Barnett said, “because Dr. Capacitor witnessed you shoplifting?”

“That’s right,” Naomi said. “I couldn’t let Mr. Lawson die because of me. That would have been just as bad as Dr. Capacitor’s attack on him.”

“I’m afraid I’m a bit fuzzy on this,” Mr. Barnett said. “You’re admitting to shoplifting, yet you aren’t in jail. Why is that?”

“After the ambulance took Mr. Lawson away,” Naomi said, “Officer Smolenski took me back to the electronics shop, to speak with the owner. The owner of the shop not only refused to file a complaint, he gave me the Walkman as a reward for getting Dr. Capacitor out of his shop.”

“He gave you ... a reward ... for getting Dr. Capacitor ... out of his shop?” Mr. Barnett repeated, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“That’s right,” Naomi said. “He told me that people were afraid to shop in his store as long as Dr. Capacitor was there.”

“I see,” Mr. Barnett said. He shook his head as he walked back to his table. “No further questions, your honor.”

“Would the prosecution like to cross-examine?” the judge asked.

“Yes, your honor,” the prosecutor said, bouncing to his feet. He approached the witness box, then said, “Miss Strong, you realize that you are under oath, right?” “I do,” Naomi said.

“And you admitted, under oath, to shoplifting?” the prosecutor asked.

“That’s right,” Naomi said.

“Did you receive any kind of promises of immunity from prosecution in exchange for your testimony?” the prosecutor asked.

“No!” Naomi said, looking confused.

“Yet you chose to admit to shoplifting, without any kind of promises from the prosecutor or the police,” the prosecutor said. “Why?”

“Because it’s the right thing to do,” Naomi said. “Because it’s my fault Dr. Capacitor was anywhere near Mr. Lawson’s shop in the first place.”

“You realize that you could go to jail?” the prosecutor said.

“If that’s what it takes to ensure Mr. Lawson gets justice, then I’ll go to jail,” Naomi said, looking the prosecutor in the eye. “Maybe not happily, but it’s a price I’m willing to pay.”

“No further questions, your honor,” the prosecutor said. He added, just loudly enough for Naomi to hear, “Thank you, Miss Strong. That’s _real_ heroism, in my book.”

#

“Has the jury reached a verdict?” the judge asked, once all the jurors were in place.

“We have, your honor,” the jury foreman said, handing an envelope to the bailiff, who took it to the judge.

The judge opened the envelope, read the contents, then said, “Since the defendant is restrained and unable to rise, we’ll dispense with that. To business, then. In the case of The People vs. Dr. Capacitor, to the charge of aggravated assault, we find the defendant guilty. To the charge of aggravated battery, we find the defendant guilty. To the charge of attempted murder, we find the defendant guilty. To the charge of arson, we find the defendant guilty. To the charge of reckless endangerment, we find the defendant guilty.”

The judge put down the paper and addressed Dr. Capacitor. “Dr. Capacitor, our society grants wide latitude to costumed heroes, with the assumption that the latitude granted will be reciprocated by an equivalent level of responsibility. You have demonstrated, both by your assault on Mr. Lawson and by your actions in relation to this trial, that you refuse to accept that level of responsibility. When a hero acts as you have, it calls for the most stringent penalties that society can apply. Unfortunately, the maximum penalty the law allows is life in prison. Therefore, you are hereby sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole, and you will no longer have the privilege of wearing the mask of, or using the identify of, Dr. Capacitor. As you have been convicted by a jury of your peers, and have been barred the use of your costumed identity, the provisions of Title 50, section 421, of the United States Code no longer apply. You will be entering prison under your legal name, Wilbur J. Tancredo. You are hereby remanded to the custody of the Department of Corrections to serve out your sentence.”

###

“So, he should still be in prison, right?” Evette asked.

“He should be,” Jules said, “but I trust Tabby’s judgment. If she says some of the victims were killed by him, they were.”

“I’ve already talked with the Chief,” Dr. Hodges said. “He’s contacted the warden to find out more.”

“What about Naomi?” Evette asked. “I think I’d like her. A lot.”

“I think you would, too,” Jules said. He smiled at Dr. Hodges. “I know Tabby does.”

Dr. Hodges blushed and mumbled, “How did you know?”

“She lives here, remember?” Jules said. “Anyway, Naomi’s doing an internship at the Hague this year. She called just a couple days before you were hurt to let me know how she was doing, so I expect she’ll be calling again any day now.”

“Will I get to talk with her?” Evette asked, her eyes lighting up eagerly.

“I don’t see why not,” Jules said. “She’ll probably be happy to know that Tabby’s not stuck taking care of me full-time.” He chuckled and added, “She still doesn’t quite trust the bots to be as ... intuitive ... as she or Tabby would be.”

“In other words,” Evette said, “they both love you, and neither one would come right out and say it before now?” Tabby blushed deeply, while Jules laughed softly.

“You can’t forget my part in this, sweetie,” Jules said. “I’m the guy who was oblivious to both of them, for nearly five years.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call you oblivious,” Dr. Hodges said. “Just far too concerned about propriety.”

“A gentleman can never be too concerned about propriety,” Jules protested, blushing.

“He can when it interferes with his ability to express his true feelings,” Dr. Hodges shot back. “Even if you are being proper, there are ways to say what you feel, you know.”

“I think I’ll go test out my new legs,” Evette announced, pushing herself to her feet. “Five, would you let me know when it’s safe to return?”

“Of course, Evette,” Five replied. “The treadmill is set up with a selection of programming, ranging from Daffy Duck to bad soap operas – but I’m being redundant. If you’d like to watch something while working out that isn’t in the regular programs, let me know and I’ll do what I can to find it.”

“Do you have any good music?” Evette asked. “As long as they’re going to be arguing, I want some music to remind me of them.”

“I have just the thing,” Five said. “I’ll have it queued up when you get to the gym.”

As Evette left the room, Jules looked at Dr. Hodges and asked, “Were we going to be arguing?”

“Oh, you are impossible!” Dr. Hodges replied, laughed, and kissed him. “Five! Give Evette ... say, five minutes this time. Don’t want to overdo it her first time.”

“No problem,” Five said. “The song I have queued up for her is four minutes and twenty-one seconds. On the other hand, the two of you may want to be ready when she gets back to you.”

“We may?” Jules asked. “What are you planning?”

“Just making sure she has all the energy she needs to be healthy,” Five said.

“Just making sure ...,” Dr. Hodges mused, then gasped. “Five, you aren’t!”

“Heh ... heh ... heh ...,” Five replied.

“What’s the problem, Tabby?” Jules asked. “Five wouldn’t do anything wrong.”

“That’s not the problem,” Dr. Hodges answered. “The problem is that he already knows the perfect music for a succubus!”

“Oh?” Jules asked, confused. “Wouldn’t most music be all right?”

“There’s a difference between all right, and perfect,” Dr. Hodges said. “We’d better get you into bed.”

“Uh ... right,” Jules said.

“Eleven’s on his way,” Five said.

“You realize, you should be transferring yourself without problems by now,” Dr. Hodges chided gently. “Let’s see if we can get you moved before Eleven gets here.”

“I ... it was just easier to build special chairs and attachments,” Jules said, blushing.

“Only to a mad scientist, my love,” Dr. Hodges laughed. “Do you remember anything they taught you about transferring?”

“Umm ... no?” Jules answered.

“Right,” Dr. Hodges said. “Five, get a consultation with physical therapy for Jules, as soon as possible. Put my name on it. And make sure they know it’s for the full ‘new paraplegic’ course.”

“Do I have to?” Jules asked.

“Sweetheart,” Dr. Hodges said, “if you don’t even remember how to transfer, you need the full course.” She hugged Jules and said, “Now, let’s get you over next to the bed before you unplug.”

“I think all the kids call it jacking out,” Jules said, smiling, as he glided to the bed and let his chair settle to the floor. Once he was disconnected, he looked up at Dr. Hodges and asked, “All right, what do I do now?”

“Given my strength?” Dr. Hodges laughed. “We wait for Eleven. While we’re doing that, I’ll get a Chux from your room. Don’t go anywhere.”

Jules snorted and blew a raspberry as Dr. Hodges left the room. Eleven arrived while she was gone, and took Jules’ shirt while waiting for her to return. Once she had returned and put the Chux on the bed, Eleven moved Jules, then the two of them got his pants off. Jules had his catheter off, and Dr. Hodges had just finished undressing, by the time Evette made it back.

“You and me, baby, ain’t nothing but mammals, so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery channel,” Evette sang happily as she bounced into the room. “Oh good! You were waiting for me!”

Evette danced across the room and kissed Dr. Hodges passionately, then tugged her toward the bed with one hand, while touching Jules and preparing him to join in with the other.

“We need a bigger bed,” Jules said softly. “Especially if you take to Naomi as well as you do Tabby.”

“Hurray!” Evette cheered, and pulled Dr. Hodges onto the bed. “Mmmm ... Jules? Who do you want to fuck you first?”

“You go ahead, sweetie,” Dr. Hodges said, smiling indulgently. “You haven’t had a chance to do it yet. I can’t imagine it’s as good second-hand as it is when you do it yourself.”

“I love you!” Evette squealed happily, kissed Dr. Hodges again, and mounted Jules. “I’m going to fuck you both until you think you’ve gone to heaven!” She cried happily and covered Jules with her body, kissed him with just as much passion as she’d given to Dr. Hodges, then began moving to give him and herself the climax she wanted so much.

###

July 4, 2010

22:00

Today was a good day, overall. Naomi called, got to talk to Evette, and by the time Naomi’s battery died, I’m pretty sure the two had become friends. We had a picnic on the roof, with grilled chicken for all of us. I know Evette doesn’t need to eat solid food, but today proved she can appreciate its flavor. Afterward, we napped for a while, then fed Evette, then watched the fireworks.

#

“Jules! Tabby! Get down!” Evette cried, spreading her new cybernetic wings as she dove to put herself between them and the explosions in the sky. “We’re being attacked!”

“Huh?” Jules asked, looking around. “Five? Are we under attack?”

“I don’t detect any incoming fire,” Five said. “Evette?”

Just then, another string of fireworks exploded in the sky, and Evette pulled Dr. Hodges down to the roof beside Jules, so she could shield them both with her outspread wings.

“Oh!” Dr. Hodges said. She hugged Evette and said gently, “That’s not an attack, sweetie. That’s a celebration.”

“A celebration?” Evette asked, confused. “Humans celebrate by firing weapons into the sky?”

“They’re not weapons, sweetheart,” Jules said, joining Dr. Hodges in hugging Evette. “At least, not intentionally. They’re designed to make pretty lights and colors in the sky.”

“They’re not intended to be weapons?” Evette asked, still confused.

“That’s right, sweetie,” Dr. Hodges said, and kissed Evette’s cheek. “Just fold your wings and lay between us, and we can enjoy them together.”

“If you’re sure ...,” Evette said, uncertainly, as she folded her wings.

Jules and Dr. Hodges arranged pillows between them, to support Evette as she lay on her back, and each took a hand when she was in place, then began pointing out the shapes and colors as the fireworks continued.

“Five, can you link into the sound system for the display?” Jules asked.

“Of course,” Five said. “Just a moment.”

A moment later, the sound of “God Bless America” came from the roof’s speakers. Jules and Dr. Hodges squeezed Evette’s hands, and soon she was relaxing and enjoying the fireworks along with them. The expression of wonder on her face, now that she was enjoying the experience of the fireworks and music in combination, made both humans smile.

“How’d they do that?” Evette gasped, when a string of hearts appeared in the fireworks at the high point of a Dean Martin song.

“They’re artists,” Dr. Hodges said. “And fireworks is their medium, the way sex is your medium.”

“Oh!” Evette said, as if that explained everything. She returned to watching the show, oohing and ahing in wonder at the combination of music and lights.

Then the 1812 Overture began, and Evette looked as if she had been transported into the same rapture she experienced while feeding. Tears of joy rolled down her cheeks, and she squeezed both Jules and Dr. Hodges’ hands as if trying to carry them along into that rapture with her. Evette was so caught up in her rapture, that when the cannons and church bells began, and the sky filled with enough fireworks to light the roof like daylight, she didn’t flinch.

Jules and Dr. Hodges looked at each other when the music ended, past Evette’s joy-filled face, and leaned in to gently kiss her cheeks in unison. Evette cried out happily, wrapped her arms around them, and held them tightly, unable to speak for several minutes.

“I-I’ve never heard anything like that,” Evette said, when she was finally able to speak. “I don’t care about anything else, if humans are able to create that kind of beauty, they deserve all the protection I can give them.”

“If you thought that was beautiful,” Jules said, smiling lovingly, “I have something that will totally blow you away.”

“You do?” Evette asked. “It’s in the files?”

“It is,” Jules said. “Do you want to hear it now, or let this experience stand on its own?”

“Oh, I’m happy with this,” Evette said, her natural eye still glowing a brilliant emerald green, not quite bright enough for a human to read by.

“Damn!” Jules said. “I’m sorry. I messed up your eye.”

“What do you mean?” Evette asked. “It works just fine. Maybe a little too well, honestly. I can’t get it to focus on things up close as easily as my own eye does. Gives me headaches when I try to read.”

“Damn!” Jules said, then hugged Evette. “I thought I’d worked that bug out before I gave it to you. We’ll get you glasses to wear until I can work out the bug, OK?”

“Glasses? Like you wear?” Evette asked, then giggled. “I’d like that. But why did you think you’d messed up my eye?”

“It doesn’t glow the way yours does,” Jules said.

“Oh!” Evette laughed. “I’m not worried about something like that!”

“Maybe not,” Jules said, “But I want your eye to look as natural as your own. And as beautiful.”

“Isn’t he sweet?” Evette asked Dr. Hodges, laughing happily. “He knows just the right thing to say to a girl.”

“Our Jules is a natural romantic,” Dr. Hodges said, joining Evette in her laughter. “You just have to get him to come out of his shell.”

“You two!” Jules protested, blushing and laughing.

“And he blushes so cute, too,” Evette teased. She kissed Jules, then said, “Honestly, sweetheart, I’m not sure you can make the new eye glow like my own. The glow is part of my magic, you know? Unless you can figure out a way to duplicate my magic, you’ll just have to accept that my cybernetic eye isn’t going to glow.”

“Uh-oh,” Dr. Hodges said, laughing. “I think you just gave him a challenge.”

“Oops?” Evette said, unrepentantly smiling. Dr. Hodges laughed and kissed her.

“You, my love, are a brat,” Dr. Hodges said, still laughing.

“Is that bad?” Evette asked, doing her best faked impersonation of innocence.

“I think she’s ready to face the world, Julie!” Dr. Hodges announced, with a happy smile.

“You think she is, huh?” Jules asked. “Why’s that?”

“She’s progressed far enough to know the difference between real innocence and fake innocence, and play the fake innocent role, as well as you do,” Dr. Hodges said.

“Yeah,” Jules said, “I guess that does it.” He grinned and drew a finger along the point of Evette’s ear, drawing out a groan of desire from her. “You, my darling, are healed enough to face the world. You can go out any time you want, since Five knows you and will let you in when you come home.” He kissed Evette gently and added, obvious worry in his voice, “Just be safe when you do go out, OK? For me?”

“Julie?” Evette asked, stroking his cheek with her restored hand, “Why are you so worried?”

“As far as I know, the Justifiers are still out there,” Jules said. “Nobody’s said anything to you about them being caught, have they, Tabby?”

“Nothing,” Dr. Hodges said. “Then again, they’ve clamped a lid on this so tight that only the people on the Justifiers task force know what they do or don’t have. Even as the Coroner, I don’t have the access I need to get that information.”

“I’ll call Rafe tomorrow,” Jules said, “and see if he’ll tell me anything.”

“I can take care of myself, sweetheart,” Evette said. “With the gifts you’ve given me, I’m not nearly as vulnerable to silver as I was when they caught me the first time, and while I may not know exactly how to use this bot summoning device you made for me, I get the feeling I won’t until I’ve had the chance to use it in the real world a few times.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Jules said softly. “I just worry, you know. And what if they find someone who knows a banishing spell?”

“Then I’d end up here,” Evette said, giggling. “You and Tabby have made _this_ my home, so if anyone tries to banish me, I’ll just be forcibly teleported here.”

“Really?” Jules asked, a hopeful light filling his eyes.

“Really,” Evette said, kissing Jules gently. “I would have to use actual dimensional magic to go to Hell now. It’s not my home any more.”

Jules threw his arms around Evette and hugged her with all his strength. Evette giggled and applied a little magic, and soon the three of them were engaged in her favorite activity.

###

July 5, 2010

17:45

No matter how many times I go over the specs, I can not figure out why Evette’s eye is so stubbornly farsighted. She has perfect 20/5 vision, but the closer you get to 20/20, the more difficulty she has in focusing on it. The circuitry works perfectly in the prototype on my workbench, yet the eye that’s in her head refuses to cooperate. I’ve tried reprogramming the eye to compensate, putting in different lenses, even replacing the CCD, and nothing works. It’s as if the eye is responding to some subconscious magical influence she’s exerting, and ... that could be it. She’s still afraid of being attacked again, so her eye is constantly watching the distance for attackers, even when she’s safely at home and trying to do things that require her to focus up close. Glasses will compensate enough to prevent headaches, but if that’s the case, only getting over her fear will finally resolve the problem.

Then there’s the other problem that’s been gnawing at me all day. I hadn’t even thought about it until this morning, when Tabby was leaving for the office, and reminded me to feed Evette while she was gone. Is that what sex has become for us? Feeding Evette? That’s sad. Hell, knowing we see it that way would make Evette sad. But really, we haven’t been making love the last couple weeks. We’ve been fucking. And while fucking may be enough to keep Evette fed, it’s ultimately disappointing. It makes me wonder ....

#

“Evette!” Jules called, exiting his desk and gliding across the floor toward the hallway.

“She’s in the gym, practicing with your bot replication bracer,” Five said. “We’re getting some excellent readings from it.”

“Good,” Jules said, as he steered toward the elevator. “So were our first impressions of the design correct? It can only replicate things with no intelligence?”

“So far, that’s the way it appears,” Five said. “The complexity of an intelligent being, even an artificially intelligent one, is more than the replication bracer can process.”

“That means I can design specialized bots for her to summon with it,” Jules mused. “Besides the gunbots, what can you suggest?”

“If she’s going to be in situations where she needs gunbots,” Five said, “I’d suggest you give her medic bots. With her regeneration, all she’d likely need is something that can spray on an artificial skin to seal wounds until they can heal, but that would still be better than nothing at all.”

“You’re right,” Jules said as he hit the elevator’s ground floor button. “We can use the number seven shell, I think. That would hold enough spray-on skin for a couple minutes of usage, which is about as long as its batteries would be good for anyway.”

“If you’re going to use a flying design, yes,” Five said. “If you use a ground-based design, it would operate for quite a bit longer, just like the gunbots do.”

“True, but it wouldn’t be able to reach her if she were injured while flying,” Jules said.

“Her gunbots already can’t reach her when she’s flying,” Five pointed out.

“True, but if she’s flying and gets outmatched, she should be able to run away,” Jules said, gliding out of the elevator and down the hall to the gym. “The medic bots would improve her odds of getting away.”

“Good point,” Five said. “Of course, for situations like that, being able to summon decoys would be good, too.”

“What about decoys, Julie?” Evette asked, as she danced across the gym to give Jules a kiss. “Mmmm ... you taste yummy.” She dropped to her knees and began to undo Jules’ belt.

“Evette?” Jules asked, while catching her hands in his and bringing them up so he could kiss her fingertips. “Evette, honey, how old are you? I mean, in terms of your species, are you a teenager, a young adult, or what?”

“It’s hard to explain,” Evette said, giving Jules a curious look. “We don’t have childhoods the way humans do. A succubus is created fully grown, ready to do her job.”

“OK,” Jules said, gently caressing Evette’s cheek. “How long has it been since you were created?”

“Mmm ...,” Evette mused, while counting on her fingers. “Sixteen days, why?”

“Bu ... you’re only sixteen days old?” Jules asked, stunned. “You seem so much more ... I mean, how?”

“When the people in that building did their summonings,” Evette said, “They summoned more succubi than there were available. So I was created. Not that it really matters, since I count the day you brought me back as my true birthday. That would make me eleven days old.”

“But,” Jules said, “what I mean is, you seem so much more mature. Not just physically, I mean, you know things that humans take years to learn.”

“Oh, data? That’s implanted in our brains when we’re created,” Evette said, waving a hand dismissively. “Data’s easy. Experience is hard. Most succubi don’t have it, you know. We get created for a purpose, get used, and then get returned to the ... I’m not even sure how to describe it. It’s like, a mass of genetic material that’s used as the source of all demons. When a summoning calls one of us out, we get spit out, fully formed and ready to perform the task we were summoned for.”

“So you really are innocent, all of you,” Jules said. “Even the hostile and destructive demons are innocent, because they’re just doing what they were created to do.”

“That’s right,” Evette said, nodding encouragement. “It doesn’t change the need to fight if one of them shows up, though. I mean, you’d kill a rabid dog, right? Even though it’s innocent.”

“Yeah,” Jules said. “It would be cruel not to. Both to the dog and to anyone it might attack.”

“It’s the same for us,” Evette said. “Well, the same for the vicious demons, anyway. I really think they must be created with some kind of terrible pain in their design, because how else can you get something to be so vicious? So it would be cruel to not kill them and release them from that pain.” She gave Jules a curious look and asked, “What’s bothering you, Julie?”

“I ... I was going to ask you a question,” Jules said, “but after what you just told me, I think I already know the answer.”

“What’s the question?” Evette asked, gently stroking Jules’ cheek. “It’s obviously bothering you, whatever it is.”

Jules took a deep breath, let it out, and said, “All right. The question is, do you know anything about making love? Not having sex, but making love?”

“Is there a difference?” Evette asked, confused.

“Very much so,” Jules said. “Having sex is ... well, in human terms, it’s like having a hot dog and fries, while making love is like having a seven-course feast.”

“Really?” Evette asked, her eyes lighting up for a moment, before she sagged sadly. “But if I don’t understand the difference, how can I experience it?”

“Tabby and I can teach you,” Jules said. “At least, we can teach you as much as we understand. If you’re willing to trust me, and not try to rush things along, I can start teaching you now.”

“What do you mean, not try to rush things along?” Evette asked, confused.

“You’re not allowed to use magic, for starters,” Jules said. “Just relax and let me take charge, don’t try to do anything to me, don’t try to get me to fuck you, just enjoy the feelings as they happen.”

Evette looked into the distance for a moment, then back at Jules, confused. “I don’t understand, Julie. I thought the only thing a human ever wanted from a succubus is to fuck her.”

“Are we like anything you expected from humans?” Jules asked, smiling.

“No ...,” Evette admitted. “You love me, and I love you. Humans never love succubi. We’re just handy sperm receptacles for male humans, um ... I think the modern term is ... boy-toys? ... for female humans, and negotiating tools for Hell.”

“So incubi are really just succubi who’ve been summoned by women?” Jules asked.

“That’s right,” Evette said. “If the woman prefers male company, we can change form into her perfect match. If the woman prefers female company, we don’t have to change form.”

“But you know we’re not like what you were programmed to believe about humans, right?” Jules asked. “And you are certainly not what people expect of demons. So, why don’t we go with what we know about each other? I love you, Evette. You are a real person to me, not just a sperm receptacle or a negotiating tool for Hell. In fact, if Hell were to try to take you back right now, I’d fight them to protect you.”

Evette cried happily and hugged Jules. “I love you, too, Julie. I didn’t understand what love was, remember? But you and Tabby taught me. If you could teach me about love, can you teach me about making love?”

“We can certainly try, sweetheart,” Jules said, returning Evette’s embrace with his own. “Five, don’t let anyone bother us, except Tabby or Naomi, unless it’s an emergency.”

“Sure thing,” Five said.

Jules offered Evette his hand and said gently, “Come with me, my love. Let me show you what we mean by making love.”

Evette took his hand, watching him with wonder in her eyes, as he gently led her out of the gym and down the hall to the elevator. They took the elevator down to the living quarters, and Jules guided Evette to the bath room. In the bath room, he transferred from his usual chair to a chair that rolled on wheels and was able to go down a ramp into the bath.

Once he was in his bath chair, Jules steered it around Evette, slowly undressing her, kissing each part as he exposed it, taking his time to find something to praise about each part, right down to her metal toes. When she was fully nude, he took her hand and backed into the bath, drawing her with him. When he was in as deep as the bath would allow, he reached up to touch her face with his fingertips.

“How do you feel, darling?” Jules asked, as Evette sank to her knees in front of him and sucked on his fingers.

“I feel ...,” Evette started, let out a moan of pleasure, and tried again. “I feel as if I’m going to explode, like every time we’ve had sex before was just an appetizer, and now you’re giving me the real meal, like I’m plugged into the power main and it just keeps coming in.”

“Good,” Jules said gently, and tugged her toward him. “Turn around and lay back in my lap, my love. Let me caress you.”

“Oh fuck, more?” Evette squeaked, but smiled joyfully as she did as instructed.

Once Evette was in the position he’d given her, Jules began running his fingers through her hair, gently combing it out so it floated on the water. Once her hair was spread on the water around her, Jules began gently kneading her shoulders and running his fingers up the sides of her neck to her ears, tracing her ears up to the pointed tips, then back down again to her shoulders. Each cycle of caresses produced soft moans of pleasure, and Evette shuddered in time with her moans.

“Oh fuck, Julie,” Evette moaned, “it’s so good. Don’t ever stop.”

“I don’t intend to, my love,” Jules said. “Not until Tabby gets home and can take over.”

“I don’t know if I can last that long,” Evette moaned. “Feels ... so good.”

“Good,” Jules said lovingly, as he kissed the top of Evette’s head. “That’s what I want. I want you to feel how much I love you, and to feel how much pleasure I want to give you because I love you.”

“I can,” Evette said, tears of joy filling her eyes. “I can, Julie. It’s like you’re the sun, and I’m a moon orbiting you, soaking up your warmth and light, and you have far more to give than I could ever take.” She opened her eyes and looked up at him, tilting her head back so she could see his face. “That’s why you can love all of us so easily. Tabby, and Naomi, and I are all planets and moons orbiting you, soaking up your warmth and light.”

“What was this about me taking over?” Dr. Hodges asked from the door to the bath.

“Evette’s learning about making love,” Jules said. “With all the information that was dumped in her brain when she was created, Hell never taught her about the difference between having sex and making love.”

“That explains a lot,” Dr. Hodges said. “I’ll be back in a minute. I’m not getting in that bath until I’m out of these clothes.”

“I sure hope not,” Jules laughed. “They’re dry-clean only, aren’t they?”

“Brat,” Dr. Hodges laughed. “Don’t go anywhere.”

“Tabby?” Evette said blearily. “I ... feel ... so good.”


End file.
